In his last will Boccaccio left his library to his father confessor, and after his decease to the convent of Santo Spirito in Florence. His small property he bequeathed to his brother Jacopo. His own natural children had died before him. He himself died on the 21st of December 1375 at Certaldo, and was buried in the church of SS. Jacopo e Filippo of that town. On his tombstone was engraved the epitaph composed by himself shortly before his death. It is calm and dignified, worthy indeed of a great life with a great purpose. These are the lines:—
| “Hac sub mole jacent cineres ac ossa Joannis; Mens sedet ante Deum, meritis ornata laborum Mortalis vitae. Genitor Boccaccius illi; Patria Certaldum; studium fuit alma poesis.” |
A complete edition of Boccaccio’s Italian writings, in 17 vols., was published by Moutier (Florence, 1834). The life of Boccaccio has been written by Tiraboschi, Mazzuchelli, Count Baldelli (Vita di Boccaccio, Florence, 1806), and others. In English the best biography is Edward Hutton (1909.) The first printed edition of the Decameron is without date, place or printer’s name; but it is believed to belong to the year 1469 or 1470, and to have been printed at Florence. Besides this, Baldelli mentions eleven editions during the 15th century. The entire number of editions by far exceeds a hundred. A curious expurgated edition, authorized by the pope, appeared at Florence, 1573. Here, however, the grossest indecencies remain, the chief alteration being the change of the improper personages from priests and monks into laymen. The best old edition is that of Florence, 1527. Of modern reprints, that by Forfoni (Florence, 1857) deserves mention. Manni has written a Storia del Decamerone (1742), and a German scholar, M. Landau, who published (Vienna, 1869) a valuable investigation of the sources of the Decameron, subsequently brought out in 1877 a general study of Boccaccio’s life and works. An interesting English translation of the Decameron appeared in 1624, under the title The Model of Mirth, Wit, Eloquence and Conversation.
(F. H.)
BOCCALINI, TRAJANO (1556-1613), Italian satirist, was born at Loretto in 1556. The son of an architect, he himself adopted that profession, and it appears that he commenced late in life to apply to literary pursuits. Pursuing his studies at Rome, he had the honour of teaching Bentivoglio, and acquired the friendship of the cardinals Gaetano and Borghesi, as well as of other distinguished personages. By their influence he obtained various posts, and was even appointed by Gregory XIII. governor of Benevento in the states of the church. Here, however, he seems to have acted imprudently, and he was soon recalled to Rome, where he shortly afterwards composed his most important work, the Ragguagli di Parnaso, in which Apollo is represented as receiving the complaints of all who present themselves, and distributing justice according to the merits of each particular case. The book is full of light and fantastic satire on the actions and writings of his eminent contemporaries, and some of its happier hits are among the hackneyed felicities of literature. To escape, it is said, from the hostility of those whom his shafts had wounded, he returned to Venice, and there, according to the register in the parochial church of Sta Maria Formosa, died of colic, accompanied with fever, on the 16th of November 1613. It was asserted, indeed, by contemporary writers that he had been beaten to death with sand-bags by a band of Spanish bravadoes, but the story seems without foundation. At the same time, it is evident from the Pietra del Paragone, which appeared after his death in 1615, that whatever the feelings of the Spaniards towards him, he cherished against them feelings of the bitterest hostility. The only government, indeed, which is exempt from his attacks is that of Venice, a city for which he seems to have had a special affection.
The Ragguagli, first printed in 1612, has frequently been republished. The Pietra has been translated into French, German, English and Latin; the English translator was Henry, earl of Monmouth, his version being entitled The Politicke Touchstone (London, 1674). Another posthumous publication of Boccalini was his Commentarii sopra Cornelia Tacito (Geneva, 1669). Many of his manuscripts are preserved still unprinted.
BOCCHERINI, LUIGI (1743-1805), Italian composer, son of an Italian bass-player, was born at Lucca, and studied at Rome, where he became a fine ’cellist, and soon began to compose. He returned to Lucca, where for some years he was prominent as a player, and there he produced two oratorios and an opera. He toured in Europe, and in 1768 was received in Paris by Gossec and his circle with great enthusiasm, his instrumental pieces being highly applauded; and from 1769 to 1785 he held the post of “composer and virtuoso” to the king of Spain’s brother, the infante Luis, at Madrid. He afterwards became “chamber-composer” to King Frederick William II. of Prussia, till 1797, when he returned to Spain. He died at Madrid on the 28th of May 1805.
As an admirer of Haydn, and a voluminous writer of instrumental music, chiefly for the violoncello, Boccherini represents the effect of the rapid progress of a new art on a mind too refined to be led into crudeness, too inventive and receptive to neglect any of the new artistic resources within its cognizance, and too superficial to grasp their real meaning. His mastery of the violoncello, and his advanced sense of beauty in instrumental tone-colour, must have made even his earlier works seem to contemporaries at least as novel and mature as any of those experiments at which Haydn, with eight years more of age and experience, was labouring in the development of the true new forms. Most of Boccherini’s technical resources proved useless to Haydn, and resemblances occur only in Haydn’s earliest works (e.g. most of the slow movements of the quartets in op. 3 and in some as late as op. 17); whichever derived the characteristics of such movements from the other, the advantage is decidedly with Boccherini. But the progress of music did not lie in the production of novel beauties of instrumental tone in a style in which polyphonic organization was either deliberately abandoned or replaced by a pleasing illusion, while the form in its larger aspects was a mere inorganic amplification of the old suite-forms, which presupposed a genuine polyphonic organization as the vitalizing principle of their otherwise purely decorative nature. The true tendency of the new sonata forms was to make instrumental music dramatic in its variety and contrasts, instead of merely decorative. Haydn from the outset buried himself with the handling of new rhythmic proportions; and if it is hardly an exaggeration to say that the surprising beauty of colour in such a specimen of Boccherini’s 125 string-quintets as that in E major (containing the popular minuet) is perhaps more modern and certainly safer in performance than any special effect Haydn ever achieved, it is nevertheless true that even this beauty fails to justify the length and monotony of the work. Where Haydn uses any fraction of the resources of such a style, the ultimate effect is in proportion to a purpose of which Boccherini, with all his genuine admiration of his elder brother in art, could form no conception. Boccherini’s works are, however, still indispensable for violoncellists, both in their education and their concert repertories; and his position in musical history is assured as that of the most original and, next to Tartini, perhaps the greatest writer of music for stringed instruments in the late Italian amplifications of the older quasi-polyphonic sonata or suite-form that survived into the beginning of the 19th century in the works of Nardini. Boccherini may safely be regarded as its last real master. He was wittily characterized by the contemporary violinist Puppo as “the wife of Haydn”; which is very true, if man and woman are two different species; but not as true as e.g. the equally common saying that “Schubert is the wife of Beethoven,” and still less true than that “Vittoria is the wife of Palestrina.”