Petrarch (1304–1374)

A portrait of the Italian poet and Renaissance humanist Francesco Petrarch, by Andrea del Castagno (1421–1457).

Italian poet, humanist, and leader of the revival of classical learning. His Il canzoniere/Songbook (also known as Rime Sparse/Scattered Lyrics) contains madrigals, songs, and sonnets in praise of his idealized love, ‘Laura’, whom he first saw in 1327 (she was a married woman and refused to become his mistress). These were Petrarch's greatest contributions to Italian literature; they shaped the lyric poetry of the Renaissance and greatly influenced French and English love poetry. Although he did not invent the sonnet form, he was its finest early practitioner and the ‘Petrarchan sonnet’ was admired as an ideal model by later poets.

Petrarch was anxious to restore the glories of Rome and Roman pre-eminence in world affairs; he urged the rulers of his day to imitate the heroes of Roman history and wanted the papal court to return from Avignon to Rome. A passionate believer in the power of ancient literature to restore antique virtue, culture, and social order to a degraded age, he inspired the new feeling in Italy and Europe towards study of the classics and more than anyone else directed young scholars towards ancient learning. He was a friend of the poet Boccaccio, and supported the political reformer Cola di Rienzi's attempt to establish an ancient Roman-style republic in 1347.

His Italian poetry includes the Trionfi/Triumphs (allegorical processions, of ‘triumphs’ of Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time, and Eternity). Among his works written in Latin are the epic poem Africa, De viris illustribus/On Illustrious Men, Bucolicum carmen/Bucolic Songs, De remediis utriusque fortunae/Remedies Against Good and Evil, and the treatises De otio religiosorum/On the Virtue of Religious Life and De vita solitaria/On the Solitary Life. The Secretum meum/My Secret is a spiritual biography in the form of a dialogue between the poet and St Augustine.

Petrarch was born in Arezzo and in 1312 went with his parents to Avignon. He began to study law at Montpellier, and subsequently at Bologna, but found the profession repugnant to his poetic temperament, and to his passionate admiration for classical literature, in which Cicero and Virgil were his chief models. In 1326 he returned to Avignon and took minor orders, but his interests and way of life continued to be secular. After 1333 he travelled widely, but from 1337 onwards he spent prolonged periods in studious seclusion at Vaucluse, near Avignon. Here he conceived the project of his poem, Africa, written in Latin, on the subject of Scipio Africanus Major. In 1341 he was crowned poet laureate in Rome. His later years were spent in Milan, Venice, and finally Arquà, near Padua. He held many benefices, enjoying their income, and was the correspondent of popes and kings, as well as a wide circle of scholars throughout Europe.