Matteo Maria Boiardo

Matteo Maria Boiardo ( , ; 144019/20 December 1494) was an Italian Renaissance poet, best known for his epic poem Orlando innamorato.

Early life

Boiardo was born in 1440, at or near, Scandiano (today's province of Reggio Emilia); the son of Giovanni di Feltrino and Lucia Strozzi. His mother Lucia was the sister of the humanist poet Tito Vespasiano Strozzi, his father Giovanni the son of Feltrino Boiardo, whom Niccolò III d'Este, Marquis of Ferrara, had made Count of Scandiano, with seignorial power over Arceto, Casalgrande, Gesso, and Torricella. Boiardo was an ideal example of a gifted and accomplished courtier, possessing both a gallant heart and deep humanistic learning.

In 1441 the family moved to Ferrara, where Matteo Maria grew up until his father died in 1451. At an early age he entered the University of Ferrara, where he acquired a good knowledge of Greek and Latin, and even of the Oriental languages. He was in due time admitted doctor in philosophy and in law.

When his grandfather Feltrino died in 1460, Matteo Maria and his cousin Giovanni inherited the fief of Scandiano with its attached lands, but the joint administration gave rise to family feuds culminating in 1474, when Matteo Maria narrowly averted poisoning at the instigation of his aunt Taddea Pio, Giovanni's mother. This caused the lands to be divided, and Boiardo became Lord of Scandiano. But already in 1461 disputes with relatives had forced him to take up residence in Ferrara.

Career

thumb|left|Italian translation of [[Herodotus' Histories by Count Matteo Maria Boiardo, published in Venice in 1533.]]

Up to the year of his marriage to Taddea Gonzaga, the daughter of the Count of Novellara (1472), he had received many marks of favour from Borso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, having been sent to meet Frederick III (1469), and afterwards visiting Pope Paul II (1471) in the train of Borso. In 1473 he joined the retinue which escorted Eleonora of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand I, to meet her spouse, Ercole, at Ferrara.

In 1476 Boiardo returned to Ferrara to become Duke Ercole's companion; here he witnessed the unfolding of Niccolò d'Este's conspiracy against Ercole, his cousin, whose victory Boiardo promptly celebrated in his Latin Epigrammata. In 1478 Boiardo married Taddea dei Gonzaga of Novellara, by whom he had six children.

In 1481 Boiardo was invested with the governorship of Reggio, an office which he filled with noted success till his death, except for a brief interval (1481–86) when he was governor of Modena. The outbreak of war between Ferrara and Venice, the vicissitudes of which are reflected in his Ecloghe volgari, and his concern for his native Scandiano, forced him to relinquish the post.

In 1487 Ercole appointed Boiardo ducal emissary for Reggio, an office which he was to hold until his death, and which has left us the largest nucleus of his Lettere, mostly of an administrative nature. When Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, in September 1494, Boiardo's health had deteriorated. He died in Reggio on 19 December, his death, with that of Poliziano and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in the same year, marking the end of an era.

Writings

In his youth Boiardo had been a successful imitator of Petrarch's love poems. For Ercole d'Este he produced his first humanist works in Latin, the Carmina de laudibus Estensium and the Pastoralia, both dating from 1463–4; he also undertook a number of free translations into the vernacular, from Cornelius Nepos, Xenophon, Apuleius, Herodotus, and the chronicler Riccobaldo of Ferrara.

thumb|Amorum libri, 1499

While in Reggio in 1469 Boiardo met Antonia Caprara, who inspired his canzoniere, his first original work in the vernacular, now regarded as one of the highest poetic achievements of the 15th century. Entitled Amorum libri tres and comprising 180 sonnets, canzoni, and madrigals, it recounts in Petrarchan mode the three phases of the poet's love, from initial joy to subsequent disillusionment and final mourning. Shortly afterwards Boiardo wrote the comedy Il Timone (1487?), loosely based on the dialogue of the same name by Lucian.

Around 1476 Boiardo began his major work, Orlando Innamorato, originally also called Inamoramento de Orlando, a grandiose poem of chivalry and romance absorbing the poetic experience of the canzoniere and the encomiastic intent of the earlier Latin works (the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition provides a detailed discussion of Orlando in its several editions). Within the chivalric tradition Orlando Innamorato is the first poem to effect a deliberate fusion of the Carolingian and Arthurian narrative cycles; hence the poem's novelty, the fact that Orlando, the hero of the Song of Roland, is in love. Seen as a cosmic force as well as an essential attribute to chivalry, love is by far the main theme, alongside other major themes of arms, magic, honour, and adventure. Fabulous and anachronistic as this narrative material may seem, the poet relates it to the present by creating the illusion of a live recitation to a courtly audience, whose reactions he registers at various points. Within this frame the narration itself unfolds at a relentless pace, governed by the so-called entrelacement technique of suspending one story and shifting to another at the point of maximum expectation.

Almost all Boiardo's works, and especially the Orlando innamorato, were composed for the amusement of Duke Ercole and his court, though not written within its precincts. His practice, it is said, was to retire to Scandiano or some other of his estates, and there to devote himself to composition, and historians state that he took care to insert in the descriptions of his poem those of the agreeable environs of his château, and that the greater part of the names of his heroes, as Mandricardo, Gradasse, Sacripant, Agramant and others, were merely the names of some of his peasants, which, from their uncouthness, appeared to him proper to be given to Saracen warriors.

Tarot

Boiardo wrote a lengthy poem detailing a custom-made and historically relevant Tarocchi deck of his own making, providing an insightful scholarly glimpse into the game's early stages of development. As the contemporary Sola Busca tarot, it exclusively features mythical and historical figures of classical antiquity for its highly idiosyncratic set of trumps and coat cards, a trait characteristic of French-suited packs. Each trump also depicts specific wildlife, similar to later animal tarots.

Suits

A single such deck, produced according to the poem shortly after Boiardo's death, and comprising only 44 out of at least 56 cards (possibly 78, if it originally included the 22 trumps as well) has partially survived, having previously belonged to captain H. E. Rimington Wilson (1899–1971), a collector of rare playing cards, and being auctioned as Lot 310 at Christie's on the 24th of November, 1971 for 350 guineas (£367.50 in new pence). It consisted of four unique suits, representing the main Stoic passions: whips (Timor > fear), eyes (Gelosia > jealousy), vases (Speranza > hope) and arrows (Amor > love), each composed of ten pip cards (ace through 10) and four face cards: fante ("infantryman" / knave), cavallo ("horse" / knight), donna ("lady" / queen) and re ("king"), three framed lines from the poem being featured at the top of each card.

{|class=wikitable

|+Court cards

| || colspan=2 align=center | Positive pair || colspan=2 align=center | Negative pair

! Suit

| Love or Arrows || align=center style='background-color:black; color:white' | Caption and imagery

| Jealousy or Eyes || align=center style='background-color:blue; color:white' | Caption and imagery

! Knave

| Polyphemus || Depicted as a Cyclopes Mentions Acis and Galatea || Argus Panoptes || Portrayed as a Cyclopes, with a peacock at his feet. Mentions Io.

! Knight

| Paris of Troy || Mentions Helen of Troy See Trojan War || Turnus || See Virgil's Aeneid

! Queen

| Venus || Also depicts a pair of white swans and white doves. Mentions Adonis. || Juno || Also depicts a pair of peacocks. Mentions Jupiter's infidelities.

! King

| Jupiter || Portrayed as a thunder god Also depicts Ganymede || Vulcan || Depicted as a fire god. Mentions Venus' affair with Mars, witnessed by The Sun.

! Suit

| Hope or Vases || align=center style='background-color:green; color:white' | Caption and imagery

| Fear or Whips || align=center style='background-color:darkviolet; color:white' | Caption and imagery

! Knave

| Horatius Cocles || Also depicts Pons Sublicius || Phineus || Mentions Medusa

! Knight

| Jason || Mentions the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece. See Argonautica. || Ptolemy XIII || Mentions Caesar, Pompey See Trumps XV, XVII

! Queen

| Judith || Also depicts Holofernes Mentions Bethulia || Andromache || Mentions Hector, Odysseus See Homer's Odyssey

! King

| Aeneas || Depicted as king of Alba See Virgil's Aeneid || Dionysius I || See sword of Damocles

| style="max-width: 675px" |

Trumps

Its lost trumps would have contained ten consecutive pairs of men and women, each representing a vice and a virtue, respectively:

{| class="wikitable col1right"

! No. !! Vice/Virtue !! Man/Woman !! Animal !! Caption and imagery

|(0)|| Folly || Fool || donkey || Also depicts The World See 1 Corinthians 1:20–21

| 1 || Idleness || Sardanapalus || marmot || See Ashurbanipal

| 2 || Fatigue || Hippolyta || ants || Depicted as an Amazon

| 3 || Desire || Actaeon || leopard || Head of a stag with antlers Dogs biting his feet Mentions Diana

| 4 || Reason || Laura || bees || Also depicts Cupid and a white ermine

| 5 || Secrecy || Antiochus I || ostrich || Mentions Stratonice I

| 6 || Grace || Graces || phoenix ||

| 7 || Disdain || Herod I || bear || Mentions Mariamne I

| 8 || Patience || Psyche || grey horse || See Cupid and Psyche

| 9 || Error || Jacob