FRANCESCO DA BARBERINO (FRANCESCO DI NERI DI RANUCCIO). - Poet, b. at Barberino in 1264, d.
at Firenze in 1348. He practised as a notary in Bologna and Firenze. Exiled from Firenze, he lived for a long time in Venezia, Provence, and Piccardia. He was able to return to Firenze in 1315, where he subsequently lived until his death.
He wrote the Documenti d'amore (the illuminated autograph is in the Bibl. Vaticana), a collection of moral “instructions” (see the ed. F. Egidi, 4 vols., Roma 1995-97), and the treatise Del reggimento e costumi di donna (see the ed. C. Baudi di Vesme, Bologna 1875), in which the didactic subject matter, conveyed through an allegorical composition in the Provençal and stilnovistic manner, is often developed with perceptive observation and with an interest, however, more attentive to outward conduct than to the life of conscience. His gift as a “poet” is entrusted to a few fresh and serene sketches of fourteenth-century family and urban life, in their immediacy.