Matteo Bandello, born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near…
1554 CE
Matteo Bandello, born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona (current Piedmont), around 1480, had received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in theology.
For many years he lived at Mantua and Castel Goffredo, and superintended the education of the celebrated Lucrezia Gonzaga, in whose honor he composed a long poem.
The decisive Battle of Pavia, as a result of which Lombardy was taken by the emperor, had compelled Bandello to flee; his house at Milan was burnt and his property confiscated.
He took refuge with Cesare Fregoso, an Italian general in the French service, whom he accompanied into France.
He was later raised to the bishopric of Agen, a town in which he resides for many years before his death in 1562.
Bandello writes a number of poems, but his fame rests entirely on his extensive collection of Novelle, or tales (1554, 1573), which have been extremely popular.
They belong to the same genre as Boccaccio’s Decameron and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron.
The common origin of them all is to be found in the old French fabliaux, though some well-known tales are evidently Eastern, and others classical.
Bandello’s novellas are thought the best of those written in imitation of the Decameron, though Italian critics find fault with them for negligence and inelegance of style.
The stories on which William Shakespeare will base several of his plays (Much Ado about Nothing, Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night in particular) are supplied by Bandello, probably through Belleforest and Pierre Boaistuau, whose stories will later be translated into English by William Paynter and included in his The Palace of Pleasure.
Another of his stories includes "The countess of Cellant", a distortion of Challand, a northwest region of Italy.
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