Dante Alighieri, or simply Dante , was an Italian poet from Florence. His central work, the Divina Commedia , is considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. In Italian he is known as "the Supreme Poet" . Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio are also known as "the three fountains" or "the three crowns". Dante is also called the "Father of the Italian language". The first biography written on him was by Giovanni Boccaccio , who wrote the Trattatello in laude di Dante.