Matteo Maria Boiardo: A Renaissance Contributor

While figures like Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Columbus, and Niccolò Machiavelli are often spotlighted for their contributions to the Renaissance, Matteo Maria Boiardo remains a less illuminated yet equally compelling figure of this transformative period. As a product and influencer of the Renaissance, he bridged the medieval and modern eras through his literary works. Boiardo's lesser-known status is principally due to his operation within the smaller confines of Ferrara, a duchy bordered by influential regions like Florence and Venice.

A Renaissance in Literature

Born during the dawn of the Gutenberg press, Boiardo was ideally positioned to partake in the burgeoning Renaissance—a time marked by a resurgence in scientific and intellectual inquiry that originated around Florence. Immersed in the literature of his time, he began his writing journey in his late teens. Initially, he drew inspiration from past literary giants like Petrarch, producing sonnets exploring themes of unrequited love. His mastery of traditional forms soon evolved into more diverse narratives, designed to entertain the erudite court of Ferrara. Over time, Boiardo became an adept storyteller, blending classical Greek and Latin influences with contemporary interests such as drama and card games.

The Invention of the Tarot

Around 1425, a new pastime captivated the northern Italian courts: playing cards known as trionfi or triumphs. These cards quickly became synonymous with aristocratic gatherings, often involving gambling. Boiardo, ever the innovator, revolutionized this pastime by conceptualizing a new game that would later evolve into what we recognize as the Tarot.

"He composed eighty poems for Trionfi: introductory and concluding sonnets explaining the nature of the game, and seventy-eight tercets (three-line poems) to accompany each card from a fifty-six-card deck, plus twenty-two trump cards."

Boiardo transformed the suits to symbolize human passions—love, hope, jealousy, and fear—and introduced "wild cards" like the Fool, laying the groundwork for the Tarot's evolution into a tool for fortune-telling. Despite the simplification of Boiardo's original poetic verses over time, his symbolic concepts continue to influence modern Tarot decks.

Orlando Innamorato: A Literary Achievement

Boiardo's most celebrated work, Orlando Innamorato, exemplifies his prowess as a storyteller. This sprawling epic catered to diverse tastes, balancing themes of romance and battle. Likely read in serial fashion during court functions, the poem was a dynamic narrative interwoven with history, legend, and mythology.

"The epic presents an alternative universe: an imaginary age based partly on historical events and partly on legend and mythology, all held together and enhanced by the poet’s skill."

The central narrative follows the knight Orlando's love for Angelica, set against the backdrop of significant events like the Siege of Paris and the Siege of Albracca. Boiardo's intricate storytelling intricately involves mythical creatures and shifting allegiances, ensuring a constant state of suspense. His narrative techniques, including cliffhangers and dynamic character interactions, kept his audience engaged, much like a medieval soap opera.

In crafting Orlando Innamorato, Boiardo wove a rich tapestry of influences drawn from Arthurian legends, The Song of Roland, and classical texts such as Homer’s Odyssey. Moreover, he cleverly embedded contemporary references within the epic, like nods to the ruling Este family and the conflict between Ferrara and Venice. The result was a vibrant homage to an idealized age of chivalry, where values like loyalty, honor, and truth were revered.

Legacy and Influence

Matteo Maria Boiardo's work, though not as universally recognized as that of his contemporaries, constitutes an invaluable part of Renaissance history. His contributions, particularly through the lens of literature and cultural innovations like the Tarot, illustrate the rich complexity of this era of intellectual rebirth. Boiardo's ingenuity in...

Though poetryprimarily Petrarchan sonnets, tercets, eclogues, and ottava rimawas his forte, Matteo Maria Boiardo (boh-YOR-doh) experimented freely with different forms of writing throughout his lively career. He translated such classical prose works as Xenophon’s Ellnika (date unknown; also known as Helenica; History of the Affairs of Greece, 1685) and Lucius Apuleius’s Metamorphoses (second century; The Golden Ass, 1566), though he concentrated more on story than style or accuracy. Late in life, in response to a renewed local interest in the comedies of Terence and Plautus, Boiardo attempted to write for the theater, producing his only known play, Il Timone (pb. c. 1487), which is considered inferior to his other work.

Matteo Maria Boiardo’s major accomplishment, the work for which he is best remembered, is his massivemore than four-thousand-stanza-longyet uncompleted epic, Orlando Innamorato. A complex poem with hundreds of named characters, composed over the last two decades of the author’s life, Orlando innamorato gathers several subject threads. The legends of Charlemagne and King Arthur are intertwined with myths and Renaissance sensibilities to produce an idealized, imaginary world wherein loyalty and betrayal, chivalry and dishonor, and romantic love and human lust are explored. Boiardo’s unfinished masterpiece, a Renaissance fantasy-thriller best seller, would inspire a sequel early in the following century from a more accomplished poet: the Orlando furioso (1516, 1521, 1532; English translation, 1591) of Ludovico Ariosto.

A secondary but perhaps longer-lasting achievement is Boiardo’s invention of what became the modern Tarot. Working off a fifty-six-card deck of playing cards introduced into Italy in the early fifteenth century, the poet added twenty-two trumps (later called the major arcana) and appended brief poetic descriptions to produce the seventy-eight-card deck that would in succeeding centuries be used to divine fortunes.