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Francesca da Rimini[frAnches´kA dA rE´mEnE] Pronunciation Key, fl. 13th cent., Italian beauty, daughter of Guido da Polenta of Ravenna. She was married by proxy to the hunchbacked lord of Rimini, Gianciotto Malatesta; the proxy, Gianciotto's young and handsome brother Paolo, became Francesca's lover. Gianciotto, discovering their guilt, killed them. The story is immortalized in Dante's Divine Comedy and is the subject of many other literary and artistic works and of Tchaikovsky's symphonic poem.
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