GUITTONE da AREZZO. - Born in Arezzo to Viva di Michele, chamberlain of the Commune, about 1225. A Guelph, he suffered exile between 1259 and 1260; taught by his own sufferings, he wished to alleviate those of others and, after suitably providing for his family economically, entered the Order of the Knights of S. Maria, to which he gave his authoritative word, his austere example and, finally, the property still remaining to him, by a deed drawn up on 7 Sept. 1293 in Arezzo.
There remain of him just over 300 poems (amatory, political, moral, religious) and 36 letters from his final years. The language is crude or harsh; the form often deliberately obscure and ingeniously artificial; Provençal imitation constant and close. Yet there is no lack of notes of delicacy in the nostalgic love songs, vigour of tone in the political verses and, in the moral and religious ones and in the letters, loftiness of thought and feeling; moreover, the imprint of a solitary soul is always evident, even in art, in the singularity of his artifices, in the roughness of his form, in the vehemence of his emotions.