Boccaccio ed Ezzelino da Romano: dallo zibaldone cartaceo alle Esposizioni

In his ‘zibaldone’ on paper (Firenze, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Banco rari 50), Boccaccio copies in his own hand, on fol. 181r, a portrait of Ezzelino da Romano. The first part, with some adjustments, derives from Paolino Veneto’s Compendium, consulted in the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, lat. 4939: here Boccaccio reconstructs the political and military career of the ruthless tyrant. The second section records a curious anecdote cast in dialogic form, featuring Ezzelino himself and his secretary, who was sentenced to death together with many citizens of Padua. The same episode, in a shortened form, reappears Boccaccio’s Esposizioni on Inf. XII 99-103, where he explicitly draws upon other sources, namely Giovanni Villani’s Nuova cronica and Albertino Mussato’s Ecerinis. The present study focuses on this page of the ‘zibaldone’, here published and analysed with regard to its structure and sources, and to its later reworking within Boccaccio’s commentary on Dante’s Commedia.