A Vision of Fiammetta by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Maria d'Aquino (died in 1382) was a Neapolitan noblewoman who is traditionally identified with Giovanni Boccaccio's beloved and

muse In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the Muses ( grc, Μοῦσαι, Moûsai, el, Μούσες, Múses) are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the ...

Fiammetta (Italian for "little flame"). Maria d'Aquino was a “

royal bastard A royal bastard was a common term (now largely dropped from common usage) for the illegitimate child of a reigning monarch. These children were considered to be born outside of marriage - either because the monarch had an extra-marital affair, o ...

”, an

illegitimate Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as '' ...

daughter of

Robert the Wise Robert of Anjou ( it, Roberto d'Angiò), known as Robert the Wise ( it, Roberto il Saggio; 1276 – 20 January 1343), was King of Naples, titular King of Jerusalem and Count of Provence and Forcalquier from 1309 to 1343, the central figure of I ...

King of Naples The following is a list of rulers of the Kingdom of Naples, from its first separation from the Kingdom of Sicily to its merger with the same into the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Kingdom of Naples (1282–1501) House of Anjou In 1382, the Kin ...

and

Count of Provence The land of Provence has a history quite separate from that of any of the larger nations of Europe. Its independent existence has its origins in the frontier nature of the dukedom in Merovingian Gaul. In this position, influenced and affected by ...

. She was an accomplice in the 1345 murder of King Andrew, the husband of her niece and Robert's successor, Queen Joanna I. For this Maria was sentenced to death and beheaded in 1382 on the orders of Queen Joanna I's successor,

King Charles III Charles III (Charles Philip Arthur George; born 14 November 1948) is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms. He was the longest-serving heir apparent and Prince of Wales and, at age 73, became the oldest person to a ...

. Boccaccio wrote about Maria d'Aquino and their relationship in several of his literary works. She is traditionally identified as Fiammetta. According to him, Maria's mother was a Provençal noblewoman, Sibila Sabran, wife of Count Thomas IV of Aquino. She was born after Countess Sibila and King Robert committed

adultery Adultery (from Latin ''adulterium'') is extramarital sex that is considered objectionable on social, religious, moral, or legal grounds. Although the sexual activities that constitute adultery vary, as well as the social, religious, and legal ...

at his

coronation A coronation is the act of placement or bestowal of a crown upon a monarch's head. The term also generally refers not only to the physical crowning but to the whole ceremony wherein the act of crowning occurs, along with the presentation of ot ...

festivities in 1310, but was given the family name of her mother's husband. Her putative father placed her in a convent.

Literature

Fiammetta appears in the following works by Boccaccio: * '' The Filocolo'' * '' Teseida'' * ''

Il Filostrato "Il Filostrato" is a poem by the Italian writer Giovanni Boccaccio, and the inspiration for Geoffrey Chaucer's ''Troilus and Criseyde'' and, through Chaucer, the Shakespeare play ''Troilus and Cressida''. It is itself loosely based on '' Le Roman ...

'' * ''Ninfale d'Ameto'' * ''Amorosa visione'' * ''Fiammetta'' (novel) * ''Ninfale fiesolano'' * ''

The Decameron ''The Decameron'' (; it, label= Italian, Decameron or ''Decamerone'' ), subtitled ''Prince Galehaut'' (Old it, Prencipe Galeotto, links=no ) and sometimes nicknamed ''l'Umana commedia'' ("the Human comedy", as it was Boccaccio that dubbed Da ...

'' (Novels № I, 5; II, 5; III, 6; IV, 1; V, 9; VI, 6; VII, 5; VIII, 6; IX, 5; X, 6) * Sonnets (№ XLV, XCVII, CII, CXXVI)

Historicity

Boccaccio scholar G. H. McWilliam contends that Maria d'Aquino did not even exist as little evidence outside of Giovanni Boccaccio's own work is given for her existence. According to McWilliam, the medieval art of courtly love which Boccaccio followed was put down by Andreas Capellanus and it heavily revolved around unreciprocated love of a noblewoman outside the lover's class. Boccaccio may have created this woman to follow medieval standards of love more closely. McWilliam briefly discusses this hypothesis in the footnotes of the

Penguin Classics Penguin Classics is an imprint of Penguin Books under which classic works of literature are published in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and Korean among other languages. Literary critics see books in this series as important members of the West ...

edition of

References

Bibliography

* *{{cite book, title=The Filostrato of Giovanni Boccaccio, volume=2, last=Boccaccio, first=Giovanno, editor1=Nathaniel Edward Griffin, editor2=Arthur Beckwith Myrick, publisher=Biblo & Tannen Publishers, isbn=081960187X, year=1998, ref={{harvid, Griffin, Myrick, 1998 14th-century Italian women 14th-century Neapolitan people Muses Characters in The Decameron Daughters of kings

Literature

Historicity

See also

References

Bibliography