Bandello, Matteo

(1485-1561)

   Italian courtier and author, born in Lombardy. He entered the Dominican order at Genoa about 1504 but eventually abandoned his monastic vows and pursued a career as court poet at the princely courts of Ferrara and Mantua and in the household of a Venetian general, Cesare Fregoso. In 1537, while in France, he dedicated an Italian translation of Euripides' Hecuba to the great patron of the French Renaissance, Margaret of Navarre. He became a particular favorite of the women of the courts he served, dedicating his many love poems (supposedly platonic) to them. He is best known, however, for a highly popular collection of racy vernacular stories, the Novelle / Tales, which were published between 1554 and 1573. These tales were modelled on Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron. Shakespeare drew on several of them for plots and characters in plays such as Romeo and Juliet, Much Ado About Nothing, and Twelfth Night. In 1542, following the death of Fregoso, Bandello returned to France and in 1550 became bishop of Agen.