Francesco Petrarca
Francesco Petrarca (1304–1374), the poet laureate of the early Italian Renaissance, has enjoyed a reputation over the last seven centuries as the first humanist. Known chiefly for perfecting the Italian sonnet, he was also an astute Latin scholar. Living chiefly in Provence, Petrarch was frequently in the service of the Church during the Avignon Papacy (1305–1378). Most of his poetry expressed his unrequited love for Laura, a married noblewoman of Avignon.
The Petrarch Collection, which Willard Fiske began to assemble in the spring of 1881, represents copiously all the facets of Petrarch’s literary production as well as scholarship on the poet. Included are magnificent bound manuscripts of his Italian poems, the Trionfi and the Sonnetti.
Within a decade, Willard Fiske had collected most of the books in his Petrarch collection. A French Petrarch scholar recalled some years after Fiske’s death that he had received a letter in 1892, “written in the purest Italian,” in which Fiske had commented: “My Petrarchian library grows very slowly, because I find few things I do not already possess.”
Trionfi, sonnetti (1450)
Francesco Petrarca. Trionfi, sonnetti e canzoni Italy (Florence), ca. 1465-70. Frontispiece, Trionfi, and Sonnetti (The decorated initial features a small portrait of Petrarch himself).
Written in a fine humanistic hand and sumptuously decorated, this vellum manuscript of Petrarch’s poems—triumphs, sonnets and lyrics—is among the finest in North America.
Trionfi (ca. early 16th c.)
Although incomplete, this manuscript of the Triumphs displays a clear humanistic hand and fine decorative features. The Trionfi, evocative of medieval ceremonial processions, dwelt on specific themes such as Love and Death as they arose in Petrarch’s life.
Volgari opere (1525)
Francesco Petrarca. Le volgari opere del Petrarcha, con la espositione di Alessandro Vellutello da Lucca. Venice, 1525.
This first edition with commentary of Petrarch’s vernacular Rime (Verse), issued by “Giovanniantonio & fratelli da Sabbio,” includes a detailed, engraved map of the region surrounding Avignon, in southeastern France, home to the Papacy from 1309 to 1377. Petrarch, often employed by the papal court, lived much of his life in Avignon and the surrounding countryside known as the Vaucluse.
Il Petrarca (1546)
Francesco Petrarca. Il Petrarca. Venice: House of Aldus Manutius, 1546.
The colophon records the publication of this edition “Nelle case de’figliuoli di Aldo” (“in the house of Aldo’s sons”). This is the fifth and final Aldine edition published by the great Renaissance printing house in Venice. Several editions of Petrarch’s Italian poetry are titled simply The Petrarch, the poet’s name summarizing succinctly the resonance of his verse throughout the Renaissance.
Il Petrarca (1547)
Francesco Petrarca. Il Petrarcha, con l’espositione d’Alessandro Vellutello; di novo ristampato con le figure a i Triomphi. Venice : Gabriel Giolito, 1547.
Displayed are the “Origine di Madonna Laura,” a discussion of the life and family of the married Avignon noblewoman to whom Petrarch addressed so much of his Rime (verse) and a map of the region surrounding Avignon. This is one of seven editions of Vellutello’s commentary published by Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari.
De Remediis (1490)
Francesco Petrarca. De remediis utriusque fortunae. Heidelberg, ca. 1490.
The printer of this second edition of De remediis utriusque fortunae is thought to have been Heinrich Knoblochtzer, based on a comparison of the typefaces that appear in this work with those used in other Heidelberg editions. Knoblochtzer was one of the most prominent early German printers. Morris Bishop described Petrarch’s Of a Remedy Against Fortune as “the most medieval of Petrarch’s works.”