Toynbee "Malatesta, Gianciotto"
Giovanni, nicknamed Gianciotto ('crippled John'), second son of Malatesta da Verrucchio, lord of Rimini, il mastin vecchio ([Inf. xxvii. 46]), and half-brother of Malatestino, il [mastin] nuovo [Malatesta].

He appears to have been a man of brutish exterior, but valiant and able. For political reasons (it is said) he was married (probably in 1275) to Francesca, daughter of Guido Vecchio da Polenta, by whom he had a daughter. Having surprised Francesca, some time after their marriage, with his younger brother Paolo, who had acted as his proxy at the betrothal, Gianciotto slew them both (in 1285). He himself died in 1304, before either his father or his eldest brother.

Gianciotto is referred to by Francesca (in Circle II of Hell), in the course of her story of the death of her lover and herself, as chi a vita ci spense, [Inf. v. 107], she foretells that their murderer will be punished in the lowest pit of Hell. [Francesca.]

Boccaccio describes Gianciotto as being 'uomo di gran sentimento. . . sozzo della persona e sciancato'. Benvenuto speaks of him as 'vir corpore deformis, sed animo audax et ferox'.

©Oxford University Press 1968. From A Dictionary of Proper Names and Notable Matters in the Works of Dante by Paget Toynbee (1968) by permission of Oxford University Press