Dante brought the universe into his poem. But "the soul of man, too, is a universe:" and of this inner microcosm Petrarch was the poet. It remained for Boccaccio, the third in the triumvirate, to treat of common life with art no less developed. From Beatrice through Laura to La Fiammetta; from the Divine Comedy through the Canzoniere to the Decameron; from the world beyond the grave through the world of feeling to the world in which we play our puppet parts; from the mystic _terza rima_, through the stately lyric stanzas, to Protean prose--such was the rapid movement of Italian art within the brief space of some fifty years.
Giovanni Boccaccio was born in 1313, the eleventh year of Dante's exile, the first of Petrarch's residence at Avignon. His grandfather belonged originally to Certaldo; but he removed to Florence and received the rights of burghership among those countryfolk whom Dante reckoned the corrupters of her ancient commonwealth[77]:
Ma la cittadinanza, ch'è or mista Di Campi e di Certaldo e di Figghine, Pura vedeasi nell'ultimo artista.
Certaldo was a village of Valdelsa, famous for its onions. This explains the rebuff which the author of the Decameron received from a Florentine lady, whom he afterwards satirized in the _Corbaccio_: "Go back to grub your onion-beds, and leave gentlewomen alone!" Boccaccio was neither born in wedlock nor yet of pure Italian blood. His mother was a Frenchwoman, with whom his father made acquaintance during a residence on business at Paris. These facts deserve to be noted, since they bear upon the temper of his mind and on the quality of his production.
It has been observed that the three main elements of Florentine society--the _popolo vecchio_, or nobles who acquiesced in the revolution of 1282; the _popolo grasso_, or burghers occupying a middle rank in the city, who passed the Ordinances of 1293; and the _popolo minuto_, or artisans and _contadini_ admitted to the franchise, who came to the front between 1343 and 1378--are severally represented by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio.[78] So rapid are the political and intellectual mutations in a little state like Florence, where the vigor of popular life and the vivacity of genius bear no proportion to the size of the community, that within the short span of fifty years the center of power may be transferred from an aristocracy to the proletariate, and the transition in art and literature from the Middle Age to the Renaissance may not only be accomplished but copiously illustrated in detail.[79]