INTELLIGENZA. L'. - An allegorical poem in nine-line stanzas, comprising 309 stanzas, by an unknown author (the attribution to Dino Compagni is highly uncertain), but certainly composed at the end of the thirteenth century or the beginning of the fourteenth.
It celebrates a most beautiful woman, sumptuously dressed, and describes her golden crown adorned with sixty stones (stanzas 16-58), her charming retinue, and her splendid palace in the East, divided into twelve parts and decorated with representations of the triumph of Love (stanzas 71-76), the histories of Caesar (stanzas 77-216), Alexander (stanzas 216-39), the Trojan War (stanzas 240-86), and the Round Table (stanzas 287-88). The woman, her retinue, and her palace are a complex symbol of Intellect, which dwells in the soul and shines forth even unto God: «e mai nessun piacer no le si serra... e chi l'è servidor già mai non erra». The material is drawn from lapidaries, French romances or their adaptations, and medieval Latin literature, and it overloads the slight plot, which is nonetheless enlivened by a delicate sense of nature and by a gentle, Stilnovistic enchantment at the beauty of the woman.