Giovanni Boccaccio: 1313 – 21 December 1375

Boccaccio was an Italian author and poet, a friend, student, and correspondent of Petrarch, an important Renaissance humanist and the author of a number of notable works including the Decameron, On Famous Women, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium (On the Fall of Great Men), and his poetry in the Italian vernacular. These encyclopedic works cover many of the subjects of Shakespeare's plays, directly and indirectly affecting their tone, characters, plots, and imagery. Boccaccio is particularly notable for his dialogue, of which it has been said that it surpasses in verisimilitude that of virtually all of his contemporaries. This is the earliest known portrait of Boccaccio.Picture and data courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License (Wikipedia).