The _Decameron_ fully
revealed his genius, his ability to weave the tales of all lands and all
ages into one harmonious whole; from the confused mass of legends of the
Middle Ages, he evolved a world of human interest and dazzling beauty,
fixed the kaleidoscopic picture of Italian society, and set it in the
richest frame of romance.
While he had the _Decameron_ still in hand, he paused in that great
work, with heart full of passionate longing for the lady of his love,
far away in Naples, to pour out his very soul in _La Fiammetta_, the
name by which he always called the Lady Maria. Of the real character of
this lady, so famous in literature, and her true relations with
Boccaccio, little that is certain is known. In several of his poems and
in the _Decameron_ he alludes to her as being cold as a marble statue,
which no fire can ever warm; and there is no proof, notwithstanding the
ardor of Fiammetta as portrayed by her lover--who no doubt wished her to
become the reality of his glowing picture--that he ever really received
from the charmer whose name was always on his lips anything more than
the friendship that was apparent to all the world. But she certainly
inspired him in the writing of his best works.
The best critics agree in pronouncing _La Fiammetta_ a marvelous
performance. John Addington Symonds says: "It is the first attempt in
any literature to portray subjective emotion exterior to the writer;
since the days of Virgil and Ovid, nothing had been essayed in this
region of mental analysis.
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