Gioviano Pontano mentions with admiration
instances of the fortitude of the savage inhabitants of the Abruzzi; in
the biographical collections and in the novelists we meet with the
figure of the heroic peasant-maiden who hazards her life to defend her
family and her honour.
Such conditions made the poetical treatment of country life possible.
The first instance we shall mention is that of Battista Mantovano,
whose eclogues, once much read and still worth reading, appeared among
his earliest works about 1480. They are a mixture of real and
conventional rusticity, but the former tends to prevail. They represent
the mode of thought of a well-meaning village clergyman, not without a
certain leaning to liberal ideas. As Carmelite monk, the writer may
have had occasion to mix freely with the peasantry.
But it is with a power of a wholly different kind that Lorenzo il
Magnifico transports himself into the peasant's world. His 'Nencia di
Barberino' reads like a crowd of genuine extracts from the popular
songs of the Florentine country, fused into a great stream of octaves.
The objectivity of the writer is such that we are in doubt whether the
speaker--the young peasant Vallera, who declares his love to Nencia--
awakens his sympathy or ridicule. The deliberate contrast to the
conventional eclogue is unmistakable.
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