De Mulieribus Claris or De Claris Mulieribus is a collection of biographies of historical and mythological women by the Florentine author Giovanni Boccaccio, composed in Latin prose in 1361–1362. It is notable as the first collection devoted exclusively to biographies of women in post-ancient Western literature. At the same time as he was writing On Famous Women, Boccaccio also compiled a collection of biographies of famous men, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium.
A miniature depicting a queen with four musicians from a c. 1440 illuminated version of the De Claris Mulieribus held by the British Museum
The Banquet of Cleopatra and Antony, a woodcut from a 1479 version of Giovanni Boccaccio's De Mulieribus Claris published in Ulm, Germany, which also depicts the suicides of Cleopatra and Antony
Giovanni Boccaccio was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Born in the town of Certaldo, he became so well known as a writer that he was sometimes simply known as "the Certaldese" and one of the most important figures in the European literary panorama of the fourteenth century. Some scholars define him as the greatest European prose writer of his time, a versatile writer who amalgamated different literary trends and genres, making them converge in original works, thanks to a creative activity exercised under the banner of experimentalism.
Portrait by Raffaello Morghen, circa 1822
16th-century portrait of Boccaccio
Portrait by Andrea del Castagno, c. 1450
1845 statue of Boccaccio by Fantacchiotti in Uffizi Gallery