MAINARDI, ARLOTTO. — Known as “il Piovano” because he held the rectorship of the parish church of S. Cresci ai Maciuoli, where he was born in 1396 and died in Florence on 24 December 1484. He was a contemporary and kinsman of St ANTONINUS PIEROZZI, Archbishop of Florence. He travelled to Flanders, England and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies as a ship’s chaplain.
His cheerful and kindly disposition lives on in the Facezie, collected by an anonymous hand and first printed in Florence around 1510; they were translated into several languages. The lively style and seeming naivety conceal a keen power of observation, and it is not hard to discern, amid the mass of witty sayings and odd episodes, a moral substance of unmistakably popular stamp. Before Mass, St PHILIP NERI used to have some of the Facezie read to him so as not to be taken unawares by ecstasy (L. Ponnelle – L. Bordet, St Philippe Neri, Paris 1929, p. 77). The jest about the wine and the thrushes is also known from the painted representation made by GIOVANNI da S. GIOVANNI (Pitti). The epitaph on the tomb of il Piovano in the Florentine church of Gesù Pellegrino is the last token of the man’s playful spirit: “This burial place was made by the Piovano Arlotto for himself and for all those who wish to enter within.”