BURCHIELLO, DOMENICO. - Poet, born in Firenze in 1404 and died in Roma in 1449. Son of Giovanni, a woodworker, and of Antonia, a weaver, he worked as a barber in Calimala, but more than the razor he enjoyed composing verses in the burchia manner, as it was then called.
He composed sonnets, sometimes satirical, targeting even persons of high rank; sometimes deliberately obscure, to the point of being incomprehensible to us; at other times made up of riboboli, disconnected ghiribizzi and slatinature, often stuffed with trivialities and obscenities.
and guffawing in the villages. Having incurred the enmity of Cosimo de'
Medici, he took refuge in Siena in 1434, where, in 1439, he brought
upon himself three monetary sentences, the last and largest
of which was for theft, which he had to expiate in prison. In
1445 he is found in Rome, where he died in 1449, still in
poverty. From him a genre of poetry took its model, which
had imitators in Tuscany and was popular.