Cecco Angiolieri

(c. 1260 - c. 1312)

Little is known about Cecco Angiolieri, a Sienese comic poet who wrote of his fondness for wine, women, and gambling; his hatred for his miserly father; and his unreciprocated love for Becchina, an earthy, libidinous woman often taken to be a foil to the angelic Beatrice of Dante’s Divine Comedy. A translator of Angiolieri’s noted that he likely outlived the writing of the Inferno, as “he is not found lodged in one of its meaner circles.”