Antonio Pucci

Perhaps the most famous among contemporary cantastorie - master singers of the tales of the noble deeds of Charlemagne and King Arthur - was the Florentine, Antonio Pucci (1330-1388). A resident of the Santa Croce district, Pucci was a tradesman who worked, as a foundry man and bell maker, like his father before him, for the Florentine Commune until about 1369. In his spare time, he offered his views about the calamities that beset Florence (the flood of '33; the famine of '46; and the plague of '48) in various literary forms: laude, satires, rhymed chronicles, serventesi, and cantari. Unlike Dante, whose great works were heard and read by the elites of his day, Pucci regaled any who would listen to his artful recitations on the streets of Florence, particularly in one very close to the Alighieri house that still may be visited today.