Andrea da Barberino's works, extremely popular in his own day, have never ceased to attract readers. At the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth cen¬turies, he created a unique late medieval vernacular series of prose epics as an account of Florentine history by linking French and Italian peoples through their ancestors, biblical then Roman, into a chronicle-like multi-volume prose narration. He joins ma¬terial from Old French epics disseminated across northern Italy with classical, popular, and historical sources on a genealogical framework that not only explains the past but also seeks to inform the future. His Carlo Magno serves at least in part as a stand-in for French political leaders of his own time and place: the Anjou family. Andrea's Carlo Magno therefore appears in a largely positive light, unlike the Charlemagne image in his immediate predecessors from northern Italy discussed in Chapter 2.

As Gene Brucker wrote, ‘The history of Florence, even at its most democratic, remains in large measure the history of its principal families’. Andrea makes Carlo Magno one of Florence's own: he narrates Carlo Magno's biography like that of a notable Florentine personality, through his family history. Therefore, building upon previous chapters about the Franco-Italian Charlemagne and the volume of Charlemagne in Latin literature, this chapter presents Andrea and his works together with the political culture of his time, then examines how Andrea's Carlo Magno appears, with reflections upon Andrea's historical moment and its influence upon that vision.

Andrea da Barberino and the cantambanco tradition

Little is known of Andrea da Barberino, also known as Andrea di Jacopo de’ Magnabotti da Barberino di Val d’Elsa. Manuscripts call him author or ‘trans-lator’, and legal documents offer proof of his living in Florence c. 1372 to c. 1433. There is no attestation of a specific birthdate or place; two archival documents offer evidence. In the first, a 1427 portata al catasto, similar to a tax declaration – he says that he is more than 55 years old. In the second, from 1431, Andrea says he is over 60 years old. He had a home in Piazza San Felice, in the Ferza district (now in front of Palazzo Pitti). He also owned a house in Via della Pergola, held land outside the city in Pieve di Settimo and practised the profession of ‘chantatore’. He is called ‘Mastro’ or ‘Maestro’.