d’Este, and Piero de’ Medici among his patrons. Notable
examples of his work in various genres are the illumina-
tions for Piero de’ Medici’s copy of Petrarch’s Trionfi
(1441), the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence (c. 1446–c. 1451)
as designed by ALBERTI, and several portrait medals in the
style of PISANELLO, of whom he was a follower. Other
works included the unfinished reconstruction of the
church interior of San Francesco in Rimini, on which he
also collaborated with Alberti (see TEMPIO MALATESTIANO).
pastoral A type of literature concerned with idealized
rustic life, especially the lives and loves of shepherds liv-
ing in a golden age of simplicity and innocence. The style
is often artificial, always unrealistic, and frequently col-
ored by the nostalgia felt by the urbanized author and his
or her audience. Pastoral (or bucolic) elegy, romance, and
drama developed as important genres in the Renaissance.
The pastoral poem originated in Sicily. The Idylls of
Theocritus, who was probably born at Syracuse around
270 BCE, include six pastorals (nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10) which
reflect ancient Sicilian life and are structured dramatically
as verse dialogues or contests (known as Amoebean or
“responsive” verses) between rural characters. Other of
the Idylls contain pastoral elements, for example, no. 15:
although set in Alexandria, it describes the Adoniazusae
or festival of Adonis and concludes with a hymn in his
honor. Idyll 1 contains a “Lament for Daphnis,” the leg-
endary Sicilian shepherd who invented the pastoral (in
Theocritus’s version, he dies of unrequited love visited on
him by Aphrodite as a punishment for his having earlier
refused love himself). Theocritus’s successors were Bion,
born at Smyrna (c. 100 BCE), and the Syracusan Moschus
(born c. 150 BCE). Bion wrote six pastorals, imitating The-
ocritus most successfully in his “Lament for Adonis.” The
“Lament for Bion,” traditionally attributed to Moschus but
probably by one of Bion’s disciples, completes the Greek
models for what in the Renaissance was conventionalized
as the pastoral elegy. John Milton’s Lycidas (1638) is the
outstanding English example of the type.
VIRGIL’s 1 0 Eclogues (c. 42–37 BCE) imitate Theocritus
and refine pastoral conventions: the unrequited love of
Corydon for Alexis (2), song and verse contests between
shepherds (3, 7), the death of Daphnis (5). The fourth
eclogue, which foretells the return of a golden age under
the rule of a newborn child, was read by early Christians
as a Messianic prophecy of the coming of Christ, and Vir-
gil’s use of allegory in the Eclogues exercised a strong in-
fluence on later poets. Far removed from the classical
tradition, the medieval pastourelle (Provençal pastorela)
was especially popular among Old French poets in the
13th century, though it was Provençal in origin. A short
narrative poem about the meeting of a knight and a shep-
herdess, it had no characteristic formal features and was
defined merely by its often crude subject matter. CAVAL-
CANTI’s “In un boschetto trova’ pasturella” is an example.
The classical pastoral, with a decided allegorical emphasis,
was revived in the Latin poems of DANTE(two eclogues),
PETRARCH(12 eclogues), and in BOCCACCIO’s Bucolicum
carmen. His “Ninfale fiesolano” (Nymph of Fiesole;
1344–46), which qualifies as the first vernacular idyll,
dealt with Ovidian transformations to explain Tuscan river
names and incorporated pastoral elements. PONTANO’s
Latin eclogues and idylls (three of each; Aldine edition,
1518) stand at the beginning of a Neapolitan revival of
the pastoral tradition which culminated in Jacopo SAN-
NAZARO’s Arcadia. (Sannazaro’s innovative Piscatoria
(1526) substituted fishermen for shepherds; in this he was
imitated by Phineas FLETCHER.) Among BOIARDO’s earliest
poems are Italian eclogues imitating Virgil. SPAGNOLI’s
(Mantuan’s) 10 Latin eclogues (1498) developed satirical
motifs by using conventional pastoral characters to attack
the follies of church, court, and the female sex.
The pastoral romance is usually traced to Boccaccio’s
Ameto (1342), which mixed a long prose narrative with
terza rima lyrics in a complicated plot involving pastoral
characters. Ameto owes most, however, to medieval alle-
gory. Sannazaro’s Arcadia (1504) was the first true, and de-
finitive, pastoral romance, the model for later authors (see
also ARCADIA). The pastoral drama of the 16th century de-
veloped in the wake of the immense popularity of Arcadia
and drew on the dramatic potentials of the pastoral
eclogue: the dialogues and verse contests, the loves of
shepherds and nymphs, the allegorical elements and allu-
sions to contemporary people and events, and the contrast
between the golden age of rustic simplicity and the so-
phistication of the court life of the audience. The court of
Ferrara in particular gave the impetus to these develop-
ments and its poets produced the two most influential
pastoral plays: TASSO’s Aminta (1573), the best example of
the type, which became the model for GUARINI’s Il pastor
fido (1589), the first pastoral tragicomedy. Other impor-
tant Italian pastoral plays (or plays with significant pas-
toral elements) are POLITIAN’s Favola di Orfeo (1472),
Epicuro’s Mirzia (1535), CINTHIO’s Egle (1545), and Agos-
tini Beccari’s Il sacrificio (1554).
The fashion for pastoral spread throughout Europe,
encouraged by the Italian example or by direct contact
with the classical models. The eclogues of Alexander Bar-
clay (c. 1475–1552), the earliest in English (1515, 1521),
are based directly on Spagnoli’s, as are the pastoral poems
of Clément MAROTin French. Both Mantuan (Spagnoli)
and Marot are acknowledged by SPENSERas sources for his
Shepheardes Calender (1579).
In the field of pastoral romance, LA DIANA(1559) by
Jorge de Montemayor was immensely popular in its origi-
nal Spanish and in translation. SIDNEY’s Arcadia (1590) is
one of its offspring, and several Elizabethan prose writers
tried their hand at the genre, most successfully perhaps in
the case of Thomas LODGE, whose Rosalynde (1590) is the
source for SHAKESPEARE’s As You Like It. In France the best-ppaassttoorraall 3 36633