GIOVANNI da Prato. — Writer, born in Prato ca. 1367, died in Florence between 1442 and 1446. His real name was G. Gherardi. An admirer of Dante, he read the *Commedia* in Santa Maria del Fiore.
Dantean reminiscences and Boccaccian stylistic traits are found in the *Philomena* (ed. by C. del Balzo in *Poesie di mille autori intorno a Dante*, III, Rome 1891), a poem in terza rima in which the poet, guided by seven women (the cardinal and theological virtues), passes from the forest of error to the hill of theology. Naïve mysticism breathes through the *Trattato d’una angelica cosa mostrata per una dixitissima visione* (in Wesselofski, p. 885 ff.). Under the artistic influence of Boccaccio, but imbued with noble religious sentiments, is his principal work, which survives anonymously and mutilated (the first four books are defective, and only the beginning of the fifth is extant). A. Wesselofsky entitled it *Il Paradiso degli Alberti*, from the name of the Florentine villa of Antonio Alberti where he, Coluccio Salutati, Luigi Marsili, and other humanists discoursed on history and philosophy. The heavy erudition of the narrative is, at times, enlivened by depictions of contemporary Florentine customs and by nine or ten novellas.