BOIARDO, MATTEO MARIA. – Poet, born in Scandiano (Reggio Emilia) in 1441 and died in Reggio Emilia in 1494. He lived in Ferrara at the court of the Este family, who entrusted him with honorific duties and earned his friendship with Ercole I. He served as ducal captain of Modena and Reggio; and when Charles VIII descended into Italy in 1494, with his spirit embittered, he carried out orders to allow the French troops to pass with as little damage as possible. Of uncommon noble dignity, he was the perfect courtier as Castiglione would later idealize him. Loyalty, love, religion, and art—the ideals of chivalry—were also his dominant sentiments.
He began by translating from Latin and Greek; but upon returning to Scandiano in 1459, he attempted to express in original works what he had learned at court and produced the fifteen *Carmina de laudibus Estensium*, which celebrate the military deeds of his lords and patrons. At the same time, he experimented with Latin pastoral poetry in his *Pastorali*: five heroic and five amorous. Some translations, such as that of Herodotus’ *Histories* and Xenophon’s *Cyropaedia*, using Poggio Bracciolini’s Latin version, seem like mere school exercises. Greater mastery of Latin is shown in his vernacular translations of Apuleius’ *Asinus aureus* and the *Lives* of Cornelius Nepos, then attributed to Aemilius Probus. As a translation from Riccobaldo of Ferrara, he produced the *Istoria imperiale*, a collection of gross errors devoid of historical value. In praise of Ercole, he wrote the *Epigrammata*.
He revealed himself as a poet in the *Anorum libri*, published under the title *Sonetti e canzoni* (Reggio, 1499). The woman celebrated is a Reggio lady named Antonia Caprara, as revealed by the initials of the first fourteen acrostic sonnets. The *Canzoniere*, though modeled particularly on Petrarch’s, shines in nearly all its rhymes with the brilliance of original inspiration. That poetry is not an expression of profound sorrow but an initial sadness corrected and consoled by serene contemplation of nature. The poet has found himself, and it is not an exaggeration to say that Boiardo’s, as a work of art, is the finest *Canzoniere* of the Quattrocento.
Boiardo wrote much more than encomiastic and amorous verses; he composed a chivalric poem that made him famous. *Valore e cortesia* was the motto of the Este city; therefore, at that court more than elsewhere, chivalric poetry from France and Brittany found fertile ground, blending with refined customs and a genuine passion for classical studies. To the court, he brought a great novelty that the poet made known to his lord from the outset: that the great paladin of Charlemagne, Orlando, defender of Christendom and France, is vanquished by the power of love.
*Orlando innamorato* was published in Venice in 1486; only one copy of this edition is known. It was reprinted in the 16th century, but no other edition appeared until 1830, when it was overshadowed by Francesco Berni’s *rifacimento* of *Orlando innamorato*, preferred by Tuscanizing purists.
*Orlando innamorato* is a poem of war and even more a poem of love. The main backdrop is provided by the chivalric matter of the Carolingian cycle, but the poet’s sympathy lies with the Breton cycle. To the old stories of the paladins of France, Boiardo infused new life, disrupting traditional forms to such an extent that it cannot be said he fused the two cycles, as is commonly stated, but rather that he altered Carolingian material—not just the figure of Orlando, but all pagan and Christian characters who embark on adventures and share in the new spirit. He varied his tales with different subjects, true independence from his sources, and inexhaustible vitality, thanks to his truly inventive faculties. Boiardo drew from the heroic tales of both cycles, classical epics, and the rough stories of popular minstrels. He freely roamed among others’ inventions, extracting fragments of episodes and giving unity even to material drawn from observation of reality. Let us set aside the idle question of whether he showed more imagination than Ariosto. One senses in the poem the pleasure of storytelling, characteristic of entertaining literature, of the romance of arms and love. For this reason, the poetry appears fragmented, as a series of episodes, duels, battles, and even vivid character sketches. This episodic style has given rise to the recent opinion of a Boiardo imprisoned by his own work, dragged from adventure to adventure to make the poem more enjoyable at the expense of unity.
But love, not arms or religion, gives unity to the poem, and it must be sought above all in the portrayal of the great and naive paladin, depicted in his vigorous vitality—not with sarcasm or irony, but with the poet’s adherence and understanding. Boiardo’s humor is always illuminated by an open smile. A pervasive joy accompanies that world populated by arms and armored men, knights and maidens. And this constitutes the poem’s characteristic tone.
Religion is certainly not the defining feature of the poem, as in the *Chanson de Roland*. Orlando, even as he remains a Christian and is even draped in apostolic zeal when speaking to Agricane and Brandimarte of the mysteries of the Christian faith, becomes impious when swept away by passion. For example, he prays to God for the defeat of Charlemagne’s army to appear as the savior and possess Angelica.
Religion, which was one of the essential traits of Carolingian chivalry in the High Middle Ages, is on the margins in our Renaissance poems.
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