With didactic intent he compiled, translating or reworking various sources (the Bible, the Aeneid, the Divine Comedy, Villani’s Cronica, etc.), a historical-mythological compilation entitled Il fiore d’Italia, of which only the first two of the seven books announced in the prologue have survived. In these, “mixing and inserting for each period also the history of Holy Scripture,” he presented, with freshness of language and style and almost fairy-tale-like movements, the Roman prehistory from the mythical kings of Latium to the adventures of Aeneas. The work, one of the most significant of the minor Trecento, was perhaps never completed. Two detached sections of it, I fatti d’Enea and Il fiore di mitologia, enjoyed popularity in schools. Notable, for the history of Dante’s reception, is G.’s love for the Divine Comedy: besides frequently citing it in the Fiore, he dedicated to the Inferno a poetic declaration in 8 cantos of terza rima and a Latin commentary.
Enzo Navarra
GUIDO da SIENA. – Sienese painter, active in the first half of the 13th century; he signed and dated in 1221 (others read 1271) the panel with the Madonna and Child enthroned in the Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, which, however, shows the face, veil, hands of the Madonna and the face of the Child repainted by a Ducal artist toward the end of the century.