Giovanni Boccaccio: On Famous Women

Between 1361 and 1362, Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375) wrote one of his most popular but also most controversial works: De Mulieribus Claris – On Famous Women. It went down in literary history as the first European book to deal exclusively with female biographies. The moralizing text contrasts the deeds of “wicked” women with those of “virtuous” women and concludes that there are different types of women. In manuscripts and prints, the Latin original spread rapidly throughout Europe and was soon translated into various languages. The first German translation was provided by Heinrich Steinhöwel (1410/1411–1479). He translated 97 of Boccaccio's short biographies into German, omitting some of the material that he considered too offensive or misogynistic, and supplemented his adaptation with the vita of the Roman woman Tullia. Steinhöwel's work was first printed in Ulm in 1473 by Johann Zainer (d. c. 1523) and provided with 79 expressive woodcuts by the so-called Boccaccio Master, which had previously been used to illustrate Zainer's Latin print edition of Boccaccio's bestseller.