1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Pulci, Luigi

PULCI, LUIGI (1431–1487), Italian poet, was born at Florence, of a well-connected family. His elder brother Luca (d. 1470) was also a poet, author of Pistole, Driadeo d'amore, and Ciriffo Calvaneo. Luigi was patronized by Cosimo, Piero, and Lorenzo de' Medici, and was the author of various works in poetry and prose. He is famous, however, as the first to bring artistic romance into Italian literature in his heroic poem Morgante Maggiore (Venice, 1481), an epic of a giant converted to Christianity, who accompanies Orlando (Roland). (See Italian Literature.)