Note 424 — Day the Ninth

D'azzurrino in color cilestro. This is one of the many passages in which Boccaccio has imitated Dante (cf. Purgatorio, c. xxvi. II. 4-6, "... il sole.... Che già, raggiando, tutto l'occidente Mutava in bianco aspetto di cilestro,") and also one of the innumerable instances in which former translators (who all agree in making the advent of the light change the colour of the sky from azure to a darker colour, instead of, as Boccaccio intended, to watchet, i.e. a paler or greyish blue,) have misrendered the text, for sheer ignorance of the author's meaning.