Where they do not describe contemporaries, they are naturally dependent on earlier narratives.The first great original effort is the life of Dante by Boccaccio.Lightly and rhetorically written, and full, as it is, of arbitrary fancies, this work nevertheless gives us a lively sense of the extraordinary features in Dante's nature.Then follow, at the end of the fourteenth century, the 'vite' of illustrious Florentines, by Filippo Villani.They are men of every calling: poets, jurists, physicians, scholars, artists, statesmen, and soldiers, some of them then still living.Florence is here treated like a gifted family, in which all the members are noticed in whom the spirit of the house expresses itself vigorously.The descriptions are brief, but show a remarkable eye for what is characteristic, and are noteworthy for including the inward and outward physiognomy in the same sketch.From that time forward, the Tuscans never ceased to consider the description of man as lying within their special competence, and to them we owe the most valuable portraits of the Italians of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.Giovanni Cavalcanti, in the appendices to his Florentine history, written before the year 1450, collects instances of civil virtue and abnegation, of political discernment and of military valor, all shown by Florentines.Pius II gives in his 'Commentaries' valuable portraits of famous contemporaries; and not long ago a separate work of his earlier years, which seems preparatory to these portraits, but which has colors and features that are very singular, was reprinted.To Jacopo of Volterra we owe piquant sketches of members of the Curia in the time of Sixtus IV.Vespasiano Fiorentino has often been referred to already, and as a historical authority a high place must be assigned to him; but his gift as a painter of character is not to be compared with that of Machiavelli, Niccolo Valori, Guicciardini, Varchi, Francesco Vettori, and others, by whom European historical literature has probably been as much influenced in this direction as by the ancients.
It must not be forgotten that some of these authors soon found their way into northern countries by means of Latin translations.And without Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo and his all-important work, we should perhaps to this day have no history of Northern art, or of the art of modern Europe, at all.
Among the biographers of North Italy in the fifteenth century, Bartolommeo Fazio of Spezia holds a high rank.Platina, born in the territory of Cremona, gives us, in his 'Life of Paul II,' examples of biographical caricatures.The description of the last Visconti, written by Piercandido Decembrio--an enlarged imitation of Suetonius--is of special importance.Sismondi regrets that so much trouble has been spent on so unworthy an object, but the author would hardly have been equal to deal with a greater man, while he was thoroughly competent to describe the mixed nature of Filippo Maria, and in and through it to represent with accuracy the conditions, the forms, and the consequences of this particular kind of despotism.The picture of the fifteenth century would be incomplete without this unique biography, which is characteristic down to its minutest details.Milan afterwards possessed, in the historian Corio, an excellent portrait-painter; and after him came Paolo Giovio of Como, whose larger biographies and shorter 'Elogia' have achieved a world-wide reputation, and become models for subsequent writers in all countries.It is easy to prove by a hundred passages how superficial and even dishonest he was; nor from a man like him can any high and serious purpose be expected.But the breath of the age moves in his pages, and his Leo, his Alfonso, his Pompeo Colonna, live and act before us with such perfect truth and reality, that we seem admitted to the deepest recesses of their nature.
Among Neapolitan writers, Tristano Caracciolo, so far as we are able to judge, holds indisputably the first place in this respect, although his purpose was not strictly biographical.In the figures which he brings before us, guilt and destiny are wondrously mingled.He is a kind of unconscious tragedian.That genuine tragedy which then found no place on the stage, 'swept by' in the palace, the street, and the public square.The 'Words and Deeds of Alfonso the Great,' written by Antonio Panormita during the lifetime of the king, are remarkable as one of the first of such collections of anecdotes and of wise and witty sayings.
The rest of Europe followed the example of Italy in this respect but slowly, although great political and religious movements had broken so many bonds, and had awakened so many thousands to new spiritual life.
Italians, whether scholars or diplomatists, still remained, on the whole, the best source of information for the characters of the leading men all over Europe.It is well known how speedily and unanimously in recent times the reports of the Venetian embassies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have been recognized as authorities of the first order for personal description.Even autobiography takes here and there in Italy a bold and vigorous flight, and puts before us, together with the most varied incidents of external life, striking revelations of the inner man.Among other nations, even in Germany at the time of the Reformation, it deals only with outward experiences, and leaves us to guess at the spirit within from the style of the narrative.It seems as though Dante's 'Vita Nuova,' with the inexorable truthfulness which runs through it, had shown his people the way.
The beginnings of autobiography are to be traced in the family histories of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, which are said to be not uncommon as manuscripts in the Florentine libraries--unaffected narratives written for the sake of the individual or of his family, like that of Buonaccorso Pitti.
