Frescobaldi, Dino

(ca. 1271–1316)

   Dino Frescobaldi came from a family of poets. His father, a prominent Florentine banker named Lamberttuccio di Ghino, was also a poet who followed the Tuscan school of GUITTONE D’AREZZO. His son, Matteo (ca. 1300–48), also wrote poetry, like Dino, in the manner of the DOLCE STIL NOVO (“sweet new style”), followers of Guido CAVALCANTI. Frescobaldi seems to have been more admired in his own day and in immediately subsequent generations than he has been in more modern times. BOCCACCIO, for example, describes him as an intelligent man and a well-known poet, who at least, according to Boccaccio, was responsible for the rediscovery of the first seven cantos of DANTE’s Inferno. Boccaccio says he sent two recovered cantos to Moroello Malaspino, with whom Dante was staying, in exile from Florence.Whether the story is true or not, it demonstrates that Frescobaldi was famous in the 14th century, and that his name was associated with Dante and, presumably, other members of the school of Dolce Stil Novo. In Frescobaldi’s lyrics, love often brings anguish and despair. The torments of love are a favorite theme of Cavalcanti’s works, and much of Frescobaldi’s work echoes Dante and Cavalcanti, as, for instance, this passage from his SONNET beginning “Donna, da gli occhi”:

   Lady, from your eyes it seems a light

   comes forth and enters my soul:

   and this light, when it is with her, often seems

   to unite with the desire already there.

   (Goldin 1973, 417, ll. 1–4)

   The scientific description of the physical sight of the lady in this poem seems to derive directly from Cavalcanti’s verse.

   Yet Frescobaldi strove to be more than an imitator, and sought to stretch the boundaries of stilnovist imagery. In the same poem, he compares the lady to a “she-wolf ” who torments him. Such images may have been considered improper by Cavalcanti or Dante, and some modern critics have suggested that Frescobaldi goes too far or tries too hard for something new in his images. Others think of him as an innovative poet whose attempts to rejuvenate the conventions of the Dolce Stil Novo helped keep the style alive.

   Bibliography

   ■ Goldin, Frederick, trans. German and Italian Lyrics of the Middle Ages: An Anthology and a History. New York: Doubleday, 1973.