Nastagio degli Onesti
character from Boccaccio's Decameron (V, 8)
Nastagio degli Onesti is the protagonist in one of the one hundred short stories contained in The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, La historia de Nastagio degli Onesti. The eighth story of the fifth day, it tells of the unrequited love of the nobleman Nastagio for a girl who will eventually be induced to accept Nastagio's affection by the appearance of a rejected lover and her beloved. The story was rendered as four paintings by Sandro Botticelli around 1483.
Plot summary
Nastagio degli Onesti is a noble in Ravenna, made rich after the death of his father and uncle. He falls in love with a girl of a noble family, the daughter of Paul Traversari. To get her attention, Nastagio begins to squander his money on banquets and parties organized only for her (a reference to the economy that links this story to that of Frederick of Alberighi). The girl, however, does not return the love of Nastagio; indeed she takes pleasure in refusing it. Nastagio tries to forget the noble girl. Failing this he starts to hate her. This drives him to attempt suicide several times with no success.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Nastagio degli Onesti” is character from Boccaccio's Decameron (V, 8). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Nastagio, degli and Onesti, not as a finished interpretation.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1232587. The first chronological checks are 1483.
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This entry incorporates text from “Nastagio degli Onesti” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.