Matteo Bandello

Matteo Bandello, known in Spanish as Mateo Bandello, was an Italian writer of the Renaissance who also served as a Dominican friar and later as a bishop. He is remembered above all for his short tales, which follow in the tradition of Giovanni Boccaccio. Sources differ on the exact dates: he was born around 1480 at Castelnuovo Scrivia in Piedmont, and died in France, probably around 1561, though some references give a year either side of that.

He studied at Pavia and led a fairly worldly life, showing little real interest in theology, yet he joined the Dominican order and left it in 1526. He worked for several noble families as a diplomat and tutored Lucrezia Gonzaga at Mantua and Castel Goffredo, honouring her in a long poem. After the battle of Pavia put Lombardy under imperial control, his house in Milan was burnt and his property confiscated, forcing him to flee. He found refuge with Cesare Fregoso, an Italian general serving the French, and crossed into France with the family. There he enjoyed the protection of King Henry II. After Fregoso was killed by the Spanish, Bandello held the see of Agen on an interim basis until a young member of the family was old enough to take it. He spent his last years at the bishop's summer residence in Bazens.

His lasting achievement is the Novelle, two hundred and fourteen short tales published in three books in 1554 and a posthumous fourth in 1573. Bandello cared more about storytelling, with its adventures, love affairs and crimes of passion, than about polished style. Writing for a courtly audience, he did not build a unified frame like Boccaccio's Decameron; each tale opens with a dedicatory letter to a figure of the period. He also turned his back on Pietro Bembo's Tuscan standard and wrote in his native Piedmontese dialect. His verse includes a Petrarchan Canzoniere and the capitoli of Le tre Parche, though these were overshadowed by his prose.

His reputation rests largely on the story of the lovers of Verona, which inspired Lope de Vega and William Shakespeare. Both dramatists drew on other tales of his too, and many European writers borrowed plots from his collection.