Although the relation between Boccaccio and Fiammetta is, like that between Petrarch and Laura, fundamentally a literary one, there has been a long-standing belief in the historicity of the lady. Fiammetta was taken as the poetical name for Maria d'Aquino, the supposed illegitimate daughter of King Robert of Naples. No such person has been discovered to exist, however, and twentieth-century scholarship discounts this traditional biographical identification. It was one to which DGR, however, like nearly everyone else, adhered.
The Boccaccio/Fiammetta relation is most important for DGR's work because it sets a model for a secondary pursuit of Dante's primary idea and ideal of Beatrice. And it is perhaps more important than the Petrarch/Laura relation exactly because, as all scholars agreed, Laura was primarily a literary and aesthetic figure, not Petrarch's actual beloved.
The sonnet comprises a close commentary on DGR's painting
of 1878, A Vision of Fiammetta
Fiammetta
The constellation
of related materials extends beyond the painting and DGR's sonnet. The picture was in fact
inspired by a
There is a
First published in