BELCARI, FEO. - Florentine writer, b. of a noble family on 4 Feb. 1410. A profoundly religious spirit, he also took part in the public life of his city: he was one of the priors and of the buonuomini, then gonfalonier of the Companies of the People. Having married, perhaps in 1435, Angiolella di Tommaso di Gherardo of the noble Placiti family, he raised his family in a Christian manner; one of his daughters became a nun in the monastery of St. Bridget. He was a constant friend of the Medici house, and to Cosimo the Elder, to Piero and Giovanni his sons, and to Lorenzo the Magnificent he addressed sonnets and dedications. He died on 16 Aug. 1484 and was buried in the sacristy of the church of Santa Croce.
His works were inspired by a deeply felt religiosity, but they are scarcely original. B. often limited himself to paraphrasing Latin sources, as for the Prato spirituale, a collection of lives of the saints, and for the Vita di frate Egidio. He was more personal in the Vita del b. Colombini, which is his best-known work and for which B., although availing himself of Giovanni Tavelli da Tossignano, went beyond the limits of compilation and drew directly on the documents, thus giving life to a celebration both historical and fanciful; in its lively and limpid prose the grace of the fourteenth century continues in the work, and for this reason it attracted in the last century the keen admiration of the purists.
B. also contributed to the revival of the lyric of the laudi, and to the development of the sacre rappresentazioni. Besides the serious and jesting Rime, he in fact composed Laudi spirituali, rich in frank and warm faith, albeit with weariness and deliberate adaptations, and Sacre rappresentazioni, such as L'Annunziazione di Nostra Donna, Il giudicio finale, S. Giovanni Battista nel deserto, Abraam e Isaac. The last of these was performed in the church of Santa Maria Maddalena in Cestelli in 1449, and revived in 1917 in Florence through the efforts of L. Rasi with music by I. Pizzetti. They all display a shrewd art and a feeling of human tenderness that at certain moments gives life to frank and effective verses.
Bibliography4 works
Silvio Pasquasi