Domenico BURCHIELLO. — Poet. Born in Florence in 1404, died in Rome in 1449. Son of Giovanni, a carpenter, and Antonia, a weaver, he worked as a barber in Calimala, but he was more drawn to verse-making *alla burchia*, as it was then called.
He composed sonnets, sometimes satirical, targeting even high-ranking figures, sometimes deliberately obscure to the point of being incomprehensible to us, and sometimes made up of nonsensical words, whimsical turns, and forced rhymes, often laced with vulgarity and obscenity.
He led a wretched and restless life, though he laughed and jested in the taverns. Having incurred the enmity of Cosimo de’ Medici, he fled to Siena in 1434, where in 1439 he incurred three fines, the last and most severe for theft, which he had to serve in prison. In 1445 he is found in Rome, where he died in 1449, still in poverty. He gave rise to a type of poetry that found imitators in Tuscany and became popular.