Editing Matteo Bandello (section)

==Biography==

[[File:Castel Goffredo Palazzo Gonzaga-Acerbi.jpg|thumbnail|right|[[Castel Goffredo]], palace Gonzaga-Acerbi.]]
Matteo Bandello was born at [[Castelnuovo Scrivia]], near [[Tortona]] (current [[Piedmont]]), {{circa}} 1480. He received a good education, and entered the church, but does not seem to have been very interested in [[theology]]. For many years he lived at [[Mantua]] and [[Castel Goffredo]], and superintended the education of the celebrated [[Lucrezia Gonzaga]], in whose honour he composed a long poem. The decisive [[Battle of Pavia]], as a result of which [[Lombardy]] was taken by the emperor, compelled Bandello to flee; his house at [[Milan]] was burnt and his property confiscated. He took refuge with [[:it:Cesare Fregoso|Cesare Fregoso]], an Italian general in the French service, whom he accompanied into France.<ref name="EB"/>

He was later raised to the [[bishopric of Agen]], a town in which he resided for many years before his death in 1562. Bandello wrote a number of poems, but his fame rests entirely on his extensive collection of Novelle, or tales (1554, 1573), which have been extremely popular. They belong to the same genre as [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]]’s ''[[Decameron]]'' and [[Marguerite de Navarre]]’s ''[[Heptaméron]]''. The common origin of them all is to be found in the old French ''[[fabliaux]]''{{citation needed|date=July 2016}}, though some well-known tales are evidently Eastern, and others classical. Bandello’s novellas are thought the best of those written in imitation of the Decameron, though Italian critics find fault with them for negligence and inelegance of style.<ref name="EB"/>

The stories on which [[William Shakespeare]] based several of his plays (''[[Much Ado about Nothing]]'', ''[[Romeo and Juliet]]'' and ''[[Twelfth Night]]'' in particular)<ref name="SHEMEK"/> were supplied by Bandello, probably through [[Francois de Belleforest|Belleforest]] and [[Pierre Boaistuau]] whose stories were later translated into English by [[William Painter (author)|William Paynter]] and included in his ''The Palace of Pleasure''. Another of his stories includes "The countess of Cellant", a distortion of Challand, a northwest region of Italy.