Hugging, with lightness of style, in the reassuring vision of love.

The only fixed point of reference in his biography is that he is known to have been alive in 1328, but the exact date of his death varies according to the identification proposed. Of him, even though he was a Florentine, he worked in Cortona, Venice and Bologna. His autograph documents still exist, dating back to the years between 1300 and 1321. LAPO GIANNI is cited by Dante Alighieri, to whom he was a friend, in the famous 9th sonnet of the Rhymes. He lived in Florence in the 13th-14th centuries, becoming a member of “Dolce Stil Novo”, a Italian poetic movement in Florence.

His composition are distinguished originality, but of him only eleven ballads and six songs remain. The Stil Nuovo represents an essential moment of that process of Italian lyric poetry which will reach the Petrarchian poetry, then excel in the later lyrical tradition. Its poetic subject is love, confession and sentimental, as a meditation on its philosophical essence and on its moral effects. His poetry abounds in imagery familiar to the stilnovisti, and his lady is like an angel from heaven. For him, the lover possesses a “gentle heart.” His imagery is derived from unconventional sources.

THE THOUGHT MY HEART IS SWEET – The thought my heart nourishes is sweet, it’s of a young girl that I desire, because of whom my spirit mounts higher, since Love, himself, and she did meet. I cannot easily express the fresh form this angel resembles who seems to have descended from the sky: she seems Love’s sister by her address, and at her every gesture one marvels. Blessed the souls she greets and passes by! It can be said that every brightness lies in her and every hope and joy’s there too, and every blossoming branch of virtue, and all this is due to her great worth. The noble intellect I have acquired because of the appearance of this lady, makes me scorn all sin and villainy, and the sweet conversation we enjoyed concerning the life of love, comforts me, when I was still new to her sovereignty. She showed me then such courtesy, that she did not disdain my gentle speech. So that I wish to thank sweet Love, indeed, who made me fit for such honour on Earth. Since my name is writ in the book of Love, tell my tale, little song, with courtesy, when you are allowed to see my lady, since I am made her servant, and so prove.

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