Paolo Da Firenze - Life

Life

An unusual amount of biographical information is available for Paolo; while details of the lives of composers of the 14th century are usually sparse, and often nonexistent, recent discovery of a richly illuminated manuscript of Paolo's music, as well as his will, have allowed biographers to piece together a basic outline. Paolo was born in Florence; his father's name was Marco, he was most likely from a humble family, and he had three brothers. When he resigned as abbot on June 16, 1433 he was seventy-eight years old, giving his approximate birthdate as 1355.

He became a Benedictine around 1380, and the portrait of him in the Squarcialupi Codex shows him in a Benedictine black cassock; and on March 8, 1401, he took the post of abbot at S. Martin al Pino. Before 1417 he became the rector at Orbetello, a post he probably retained until around 1427. In the first decade of the 15th century, probably close to 1410, while in Florence, he supervised the compilation of Squarcialupi Codex, the single most important source of music in Italy in the 14th century.

Paolo died in Florence. Since his will was dated September 21, 1436, he either died on that date or later, at an extremely advanced age (eighty-one) for the time.