Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

Petrarch’s Virgil (title page) (c. 1336) Illuminated manuscript by Simone Martini, 29 x 20 cm Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

The Triumph of Death, or The 3 Fates. Flemish tapestry (probably Brussels, ca. 1510–1520). Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, who spin, draw out and cut the thread of life, represent Death in this tapestry, as they triumph over the fallen body of Chastity. This is the third subject in Petrarch’s poem « The Great Triumphs ». First, Love triumphs; then Love is overcome by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time and Time by Eternity

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

Laura de Noves

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

Petrarch’s Arquà house near Padua where he retired to spend his last years

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

La Casa del Petrarca (birthplace) at Vicolo dell’Orto, 28 in Arezzo

Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch

Dante Alighieri, detail from a Luca Signorelli fresco in the chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto.

Francesco Petrarca Giacobbe Giusti, Petrarch
Petrarch portrait by Altichiero
Born	July 20, 1304 Arezzo, Italy
Died	July 19, 1374 (aged 69) Arquà, Italy
Occupation	Scholar, poet
Nationality	Italian
Period	Early Renaissance
Literary movement	Renaissance humanism
Children	Giovanni (1337–1361) Francesca (born in 1343)
Relatives	Eletta Canigiani (mother) Ser Petracco (father)

Santa Maria della Pieve in Arezzo

La Casa del Petrarca (birthplace) at Vicolo dell’Orto, 28 in Arezzo

Francesco Petrarca(Italian: [franˈtʃesko peˈtrarka]; July 20, 1304 – July 18/19, 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch (/ˈpiːtrɑːrk, ˈpɛ-/), was a scholar and poet of Renaissance Italy who was one of the earliest humanists. His rediscovery of Cicero‘s letters is often credited with initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism.^[1] In the 16th century, Pietro Bembo created the model for the modern Italian language based on Petrarch’s works, as well as those of Giovanni Boccaccio, and, to a lesser extent, Dante Alighieri.^[2]Petrarch would be later endorsed as a model for Italian style by the Accademia della Crusca.

Petrarch’s sonnets were admired and imitated throughout Europe during the Renaissance and became a model for lyrical poetry. He is also known for being the first to develop the concept of the « Dark Ages. »^[3]

Biography

Youth and early career

Petrarch was born in the Tuscan city of Arezzo in 1304. He was the son of Ser Petracco and his wife Eletta Canigiani. His given name was Francesco Petracco. The name was Latinized to Petrarca. Petrarch’s younger brother was born in Incisa in Val d’Arno in 1307. Dante was a friend of his father.^[4]

Petrarch spent his early childhood in the village of Incisa, near Florence. He spent much of his early life at Avignon and nearby Carpentras, where his family moved to follow Pope Clement V who moved there in 1309 to begin the Avignon Papacy. He studied law at the University of Montpellier (1316–20) and Bologna (1320–23) with a lifelong friend and schoolmate called Guido Sette. Because his father was in the profession of law, he insisted that Petrarch and his brother study law also. Petrarch however, was primarily interested in writing and Latin literature and considered these seven years wasted. Additionally, he proclaimed that through legal manipulation his guardians robbed him of his small property inheritance in Florence, which only reinforced his dislike for the legal system. He protested, « I couldn’t face making a merchandise of my mind, » as he viewed the legal system as the art of selling justice.^[4]

Petrarch was a prolific letter writer and counted Boccaccio among his notable friends to whom he wrote often. After the death of their parents, Petrarch and his brother Gherardo went back to Avignon in 1326, where he worked in numerous clerical offices. This work gave him much time to devote to his writing. With his first large-scale work, Africa, an epic in Latin about the great Roman general Scipio Africanus, Petrarch emerged as a European celebrity. On April 8, 1341, he became the second ^[5] poet laureate since antiquity and was crowned by Roman Senatori Giordano Orsini and Orso dell’Anguillara on the holy grounds of Rome’s Capitol.^[6][7][8]

He traveled widely in Europe, served as an ambassador, and has been called « the first tourist« ^[9] because he traveled just for pleasure,^[10] and the reason he climbed Mont Ventoux.^[11] During his travels, he collected crumbling Latin manuscripts and was a prime mover in the recovery of knowledge from writers of Rome and Greece. He encouraged and advised Leontius Pilatus‘s translation of Homerfrom a manuscript purchased by Boccaccio, although he was severely critical of the result. Petrarch had acquired a copy, which he did not entrust to Leontius,^[12] but he knew no Greek; Homer, Petrarch said, « was dumb to him, while he was deaf to Homer ».^[13] In 1345 he personally discovered a collection of Cicero‘s letters not previously known to have existed, the collection Epistulae ad Atticum, in the Chapter Library (Biblioteca Capitolare) of Verona Cathedral.^[14]

Disdaining what he believed to be the ignorance of the centuries preceding the era in which he lived, Petrarch is credited or charged with creating the concept of a historical « Dark Ages« .^[3]

Mount Ventoux

 Ascent of Mont Ventoux

Summit of Mont Ventoux

Petrarch recounts that on April 26, 1336, with his brother and two servants, he climbed to the top of Mont Ventoux (1,912 meters (6,273 ft), a feat which he undertook for recreation rather than necessity.^[15] The exploit is described in a celebrated letter addressed to his friend and confessor, the monk Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro, composed some time after the fact. In it, Petrarch claimed to have been inspired by Philip V of Macedon‘s ascent of Mount Haemo and that an aged peasant had told him that nobody had ascended Ventoux before or after himself, 50 years before, and warned him against attempting to do so. The nineteenth-century Swiss historian Jacob Burckhardt noted that Jean Buridan had climbed the same mountain a few years before, and ascents accomplished during the Middle Ages have been recorded, including that of Anno II, Archbishop of Cologne.^[16][17]

Scholars^[18] note that Petrarch’s letter^[19][20] to Dionigi displays a strikingly « modern » attitude of aesthetic gratification in the grandeur of the scenery and is still often cited in books and journals devoted to the sport of mountaineering. In Petrarch, this attitude is coupled with an aspiration for a virtuous Christian life, and on reaching the summit, he took from his pocket a volume by his beloved mentor, Saint Augustine, that he always carried with him.^[21]

For pleasure alone he climbed Mont Ventoux, which rises to more than six thousand feet, beyond Vaucluse. It was no great feat, of course; but he was the first recorded Alpinist of modern times, the first to climb a mountain merely for the delight of looking from its top. (Or almost the first; for in a high pasture he met an old shepherd, who said that fifty years before he had attained the summit, and had got nothing from it save toil and repentance and torn clothing.) Petrarch was dazed and stirred by the view of the Alps, the mountains around Lyons, the Rhone, the Bay of Marseilles. He took Augustine‘s Confessions from his pocket and reflected that his climb was merely an allegory of aspiration toward a better life.^[22]

As the book fell open, Petrarch’s eyes were immediately drawn to the following words:

And men go about to wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the circuit of the ocean, and the revolution of the stars, but themselves they consider not.^[19]

Petrarch’s response was to turn from the outer world of nature to the inner world of « soul »:

I closed the book, angry with myself that I should still be admiring earthly things who might long ago have learned from even the pagan philosophers that nothing is wonderful but the soul, which, when great itself, finds nothing great outside itself. Then, in truth, I was satisfied that I had seen enough of the mountain; I turned my inward eye upon myself, and from that time not a syllable fell from my lips until we reached the bottom again. […] [W]e look about us for what is to be found only within. […] How many times, think you, did I turn back that day, to glance at the summit of the mountain which seemed scarcely a cubit high compared with the range of human contemplation […]^[19]

James Hillman argues that this rediscovery of the inner world is the real significance of the Ventoux event.^[23] The Renaissance begins not with the ascent of Mont Ventoux but with the subsequent descent—the « return […] to the valley of soul », as Hillman puts it. Arguing against such a singular and hyperbolic periodization, Paul James suggests a different reading:

In the alternative argument that I want to make, these emotional responses, marked by the changing senses of space and time in Petrarch’s writing, suggest a person caught in unsettled tension between two different but contemporaneous ontological formations: the traditional and the modern.^[24]

Later years

Petrarch spent the later part of his life journeying through northern Italy as an international scholar and poet-diplomat. His career in the Churchdid not allow him to marry, but he is believed to have fathered two children by a woman or women unknown to posterity. A son, Giovanni, was born in 1337, and a daughter, Francesca, was born in 1343. Both he later legitimized.^[25]

Petrarch’s Arquà house near Padua where he retired to spend his last years

Giovanni died of the plague in 1361. In the same year Petrarch was named canon in Monselice near Padua. Francesca married Francescuolo da Brossano (who was later named executor of Petrarch’s will) that same year. In 1362, shortly after the birth of a daughter, Eletta (the same name as Petrarch’s mother), they joined Petrarch in Venice to flee the plague then ravaging parts of Europe. A second grandchild, Francesco, was born in 1366, but died before his second birthday. Francesca and her family lived with Petrarch in Venice for five years from 1362 to 1367 at Palazzo Molina; although Petrarch continued to travel in those years. Between 1361 and 1369 the younger Boccaccio paid the older Petrarch two visits. The first was in Venice, the second was in Padua.

About 1368 Petrarch and his daughter Francesca (with her family) moved to the small town of Arquà in the Euganean Hills near Padua, where he passed his remaining years in religious contemplation. He died in his house in Arquà early on July 20, 1374 – his seventieth birthday. The house hosts now a permanent exhibition of Petrarchian works and curiosities; among others you find the famous tomb of Petrarch’s beloved cat who was embalmed. On the marble slab there is a Latin inscription written by Antonio Quarenghi:

Etruscus gemino vates ardebat amore:
Maximus ignis ego; Laura secundus erat.
Quid rides? divinæ illam si gratia formæ,
Me dignam eximio fecit amante fides.
Si numeros geniumque sacris dedit illa libellis
Causa ego ne sævis muribus esca forent.
Arcebam sacro vivens a limine mures,
Ne domini exitio scripta diserta forent;
Incutio trepidis eadem defuncta pavorem,
Et viget exanimi in corpore prisca fides.^[26]

Petrarch’s will (dated April 4, 1370) leaves 50 florins to Boccaccio « to buy a warm winter dressing gown »; various legacies (a horse, a silver cup, a lute, a Madonna) to his brother and his friends; his house in Vaucluse to its caretaker; for his soul, and for the poor; and the bulk of his estate to his son-in-law, Francescuolo da Brossano, who is to give half of it to « the person to whom, as he knows, I wish it to go »; presumably his daughter, Francesca, Brossano’s wife. The will mentions neither the property in Arquà nor his library; Petrarch’s libraryof notable manuscripts was already promised to Venice, in exchange for the Palazzo Molina. This arrangement was probably cancelled when he moved to Padua, the enemy of Venice, in 1368. The library was seized by the lords of Padua, and his books and manuscripts are now widely scattered over Europe.^[27] Nevertheless, the Biblioteca Marciana traditionally claimed this bequest as its founding, although it was in fact founded by Cardinal Bessarion in 1468.^[28]

Works

Original lyrics by Petrarch, found in 1985 in Erfurt

Petrarch’s Virgil (title page)(c. 1336)
Illuminated manuscript by Simone Martini, 29 x 20 cm Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan.

The Triumph of Death, or The 3 Fates. Flemish tapestry (probably Brussels, ca. 1510–1520). Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The three Fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos, who spin, draw out and cut the thread of life, represent Death in this tapestry, as they triumph over the fallen body of Chastity. This is the third subject in Petrarch’s poem « The Great Triumphs ». First, Love triumphs; then Love is overcome by Chastity, Chastity by Death, Death by Fame, Fame by Time and Time by Eternity

Petrarch is best known for his Italian poetry, notably the Canzoniere(« Songbook ») and the Trionfi(« Triumphs »). However, Petrarch was an enthusiastic Latin scholar and did most of his writing in this language. His Latin writings include scholarly works, introspective essays, letters, and more poetry. Among them are Secretum Meum (« My Secret Book »), an intensely personal, guilt-ridden imaginary dialogue with Augustine of Hippo; De Viris Illustribus (« On Famous Men »), a series of moral biographies; Rerum Memorandarum Libri, an incomplete treatise on the cardinal virtues; De Otio Religiosorum(« On Religious Leisure »)^[29] and De Vita Solitaria (« On the Solitary Life »), which praise the contemplative life; De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae(« Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul »), a self-help book which remained popular for hundreds of years; Itinerarium (« Petrarch’s Guide to the Holy Land »); invectives against opponents such as doctors, scholastics, and the French; the Carmen Bucolicum, a collection of 12 pastoral poems; and the unfinished epic Africa. He translated seven psalms, a collection known as the Penitential Psalms.^[30]

Petrarch revived the work and letters of the ancient Roman Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero

Petrarch also published many volumes of his letters, including a few written to his long-dead friends from history such as Cicero and Virgil. Cicero, Virgil, and Seneca were his literary models. Most of his Latin writings are difficult to find today, but several of his works are available in English translations. Several of his Latin works are scheduled to appear in the Harvard University Press series I Tatti.^[31] It is difficult to assign any precise dates to his writings because he tended to revise them throughout his life.

Petrarch collected his letters into two major sets of books called Epistolae familiares (« Letters on Familiar Matters« ) and Seniles(« Letters of Old Age« ), both of which are available in English translation.^[32] The plan for his letters was suggested to him by knowledge of Cicero‘s letters. These were published « without names » to protect the recipients, all of whom had close relationships to Petrarch. The recipients of these letters included Philippe de Cabassoles, bishop of Cavaillon; Ildebrandino Conti, bishop of Padua; Cola di Rienzo, tribune of Rome; Francesco Nelli, priest of the Prior of the Church of the Holy Apostles in Florence; and Niccolò di Capoccia, a cardinal and priest of Saint Vitalis. His « Letter to Posterity » (the last letter in Seniles)^[33] gives an autobiography and a synopsis of his philosophy in life. It was originally written in Latin and was completed in 1371 or 1372 – the first such autobiography in a thousand years (since Saint Augustine).^[34][35]

While Petrarch’s poetry was set to music frequently after his death, especially by Italian madrigal composers of the Renaissance in the 16th century, only one musical setting composed during Petrarch’s lifetime survives. This is Non al suo amante by Jacopo da Bologna, written around 1350.

Laura and poetry

On April 6, 1327,^[36] after Petrarch gave up his vocation as a priest, the sight of a woman called « Laura » in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon awoke in him a lasting passion, celebrated in the Rime sparse (« Scattered rhymes »). Later, Renaissance poets who copied Petrarch’s style named this collection of 366 poems Il Canzoniere(« Song Book »).^[37] Laura may have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (an ancestor of the Marquis de Sade). There is little definite information in Petrarch’s work concerning Laura, except that she is lovely to look at, fair-haired, with a modest, dignified bearing. Laura and Petrarch had little or no personal contact. According to his « Secretum », she refused him because she was already married. He channeled his feelings into love poems that were exclamatory rather than persuasive, and wrote prose that showed his contempt for men who pursue women. Upon her death in 1348, the poet found that his grief was as difficult to live with as was his former despair. Later in his « Letter to Posterity », Petrarch wrote: « In my younger days I struggled constantly with an overwhelming but pure love affair – my only one, and I would have struggled with it longer had not premature death, bitter but salutary for me, extinguished the cooling flames. I certainly wish I could say that I have always been entirely free from desires of the flesh, but I would be lying if I did ».

Laura de Noves

While it is possible she was an idealized or pseudonymous character – particularly since the name « Laura » has a linguistic connection to the poetic « laurels » Petrarch coveted – Petrarch himself always denied it. His frequent use of l’aura is also remarkable: for example, the line « Erano i capei d’oro a l’aura sparsi » may both mean « her hair was all over Laura’s body », and « the wind (« l’aura ») blew through her hair ». There is psychological realism in the description of Laura, although Petrarch draws heavily on conventionalised descriptions of love and lovers from troubadoursongs and other literature of courtly love. Her presence causes him unspeakable joy, but his unrequited love creates unendurable desires, inner conflicts between the ardent lover and the mystic Christian, making it impossible to reconcile the two. Petrarch’s quest for love leads to hopelessness and irreconcilable anguish, as he expresses in the series of paradoxes in Rima 134 « Pace non trovo, et non ò da far guerra;/e temo, et spero; et ardo, et son un ghiaccio »: « I find no peace, and yet I make no war:/and fear, and hope: and burn, and I am ice ».^[38]

Laura is unreachable – the few physical descriptions of her are vague, almost impalpable as the love he pines for, and such is perhaps the power of his verse, which lives off the melodies it evokes against the fading, diaphanous image that is no more consistent than a ghost. Francesco De Sanctis remarks much the same thing in his Storia della letteratura italiana, and contemporary critics agree on the powerful music of his verse. Perhaps the poet was inspired by a famous singer he met in Veneto around the 1350s.^[39] Gianfranco Contini, in a famous essay on Petrarch’s language (« Preliminari sulla lingua del Petrarca ». Petrarca, Canzoniere. Turin, Einaudi, 1964) has spoken of linguistic indeterminacy – Petrarch never rises above the « bel pié » (her lovely foot): Laura is too holy to be painted; she is an awe-inspiring goddess. Sensuality and passion are suggested rather by the rhythm and music that shape the vague contours of the lady. In addition, some today consider Laura to be a representation of an « ideal Renaissance woman », based on her nature and definitive characteristics.

Sonnet 227

Original Italian[40]

English translation by A. S. Kline[41]

Aura che quelle chiome bionde et crespe cercondi et movi, et se’ mossa da loro, soavemente, et spargi quel dolce oro, et poi ’l raccogli, e ’n bei nodi il rincrespe, tu stai nelli occhi ond’amorose vespe mi pungon sí, che ’nfin qua il sento et ploro, et vacillando cerco il mio tesoro, come animal che spesso adombre e ’ncespe: ch’or me ’l par ritrovar, et or m’accorgo ch’i’ ne son lunge, or mi sollievo or caggio, ch’or quel ch’i’ bramo, or quel ch’è vero scorgo. Aër felice, col bel vivo raggio rimanti; et tu corrente et chiaro gorgo, ché non poss’io cangiar teco vïaggio?

Breeze, blowing that blonde curling hair, stirring it, and being softly stirred in turn, scattering that sweet gold about, then gathering it, in a lovely knot of curls again, you linger around bright eyes whose loving sting pierces me so, till I feel it and weep, and I wander searching for my treasure, like a creature that often shies and kicks: now I seem to find her, now I realise she’s far away, now I’m comforted, now despair, now longing for her, now truly seeing her. Happy air, remain here with your living rays: and you, clear running stream, why can’t I exchange my path for yours?

Dante

Dante Alighieri, detail from a Luca Signorelli fresco in the chapel of San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto.

Petrarch is a world apart from Dante and his Divina Commedia. In spite of the metaphysical subject, the Commedia is deeply rooted in the cultural and social milieu of turn-of-the-century Florence: Dante’s rise to power (1300) and exile (1302), his political passions call for a « violent » use of language, where he uses all the registers, from low and trivial to sublime and philosophical. Petrarch confessed to Boccaccio that he had never read the Commedia, remarks Contini, wondering whether this was true or Petrarch wanted to distance himself from Dante. Dante’s language evolves as he grows old, from the courtly love of his early stilnovisticRime and Vita nuova to the Convivio and Divina Commedia, where Beatrice is sanctified as the goddess of philosophy – the philosophy announced by the Donna Gentile at the death of Beatrice.^[42]

In contrast, Petrarch’s thought and style are relatively uniform throughout his life – he spent much of it revising the songs and sonnets of the Canzoniere rather than moving to new subjects or poetry. Here, poetry alone provides a consolation for personal grief, much less philosophy or politics (as in Dante), for Petrarch fights within himself (sensuality versus mysticism, profane versus Christianliterature), not against anything outside of himself. The strong moral and political convictions which had inspired Dante belong to the Middle Ages and the libertarian spirit of the commune; Petrarch’s moral dilemmas, his refusal to take a stand in politics, his reclusive life point to a different direction, or time. The free commune, the place that had made Dante an eminent politician and scholar, was being dismantled: the signoria was taking its place. Humanism and its spirit of empirical inquiry, however, were making progress – but the papacy (especially after Avignon) and the empire (Henry VII, the last hope of the white Guelphs, died near Siena in 1313) had lost much of their original prestige.^[43]

Petrarch polished and perfected the sonnet form inherited from Giacomo da Lentini and which Dante widely used in his Vita nuova to popularise the new courtly love of the Dolce Stil Novo. The tercet benefits from Dante’s terza rima (compare the Divina Commedia), the quatrains prefer the ABBA-ABBA to the ABAB-ABAB scheme of the Sicilians. The imperfect rhymes of u with closed o and i with closed e(inherited from Guittone’s mistaken rendering of Sicilian verse) are excluded, but the rhyme of open and closed o is kept. Finally, Petrarch’s enjambment creates longer semantic units by connecting one line to the following. The vast majority (317) of Petrarch’s 366 poems collected in the Canzoniere (dedicated to Laura) were sonnets, and the Petrarchan sonnet still bears his name.^[44]

Philosophy

Petrarch

Statue of Petrarch on the Uffizi Palace, in Florence

Petrarch is traditionally called the father of Humanism and considered by many to be the « father of the Renaissance. »^[45] In his work Secretum meum he points out that secular achievements did not necessarily preclude an authentic relationship with God. Petrarch argued instead that God had given humans their vast intellectual and creative potential to be used to their fullest.^[46] He inspired humanist philosophy which led to the intellectual flowering of the Renaissance. He believed in the immense moral and practical value of the study of ancient history and literature – that is, the study of human thought and action. Petrarch was a devout Catholic and did not see a conflict between realizing humanity’s potential and having religious faith.

A highly introspective man, he shaped the nascent humanist movement a great deal because many of the internal conflicts and musings expressed in his writings were seized upon by Renaissance humanist philosophers and argued continually for the next 200 years. For example, Petrarch struggled with the proper relation between the active and contemplative life, and tended to emphasize the importance of solitude and study. In a clear disagreement with Dante, in 1346 Petrarch argued in his De vita solitaria that Pope Celestine V‘s refusal of the papacy in 1294 was as a virtuous example of solitary life.^[47] Later the politician and thinker Leonardo Bruni (1370-1444) argued for the active life, or « civic humanism« . As a result, a number of political, military, and religious leaders during the Renaissance were inculcated with the notion that their pursuit of personal fulfillment should be grounded in classicalexample and philosophical contemplation.^[48]

Legacy

Petrarch’s tomb at Arquà Petrarca

Petrarch’s influence is evident in the works of Serafino Ciminelli from Aquila (1466-1500) and in the works of Marin Držić (1508-1567) from Dubrovnik.^[49]

The Romantic composer Franz Liszt set three of Petrarch’s Sonnets (47, 104, and 123) to music for voice, Tre sonetti del Petrarca, which he later would transcribe for solo piano for inclusion in the suite Années de Pèlerinage. Liszt also set a poem by Victor Hugo,  » O quand je dors » in which Petrarch and Laura are invoked as the epitome of erotic love.

While in Avignon in 1991, Modernist composer Elliott Carter completed his solo flute piece Scrivo in Vento which is in part inspired by and structured by Petrarch’s Sonnet 212, Beato in sogno.^[50] It was premiered on Petrarch’s 687th birthday.^[51]

In November 2003, it was announced that pathological anatomistswould be exhuming Petrarch’s body from his casket in Arquà Petrarca, in order to verify 19th-century reports that he had stood 1.83 meters (about six feet), which would have been tall for his period. The team from the University of Padua also hoped to reconstruct his cranium in order to generate a computerized image of his features to coincide with his 700th birthday. The tomb had been opened previously in 1873 by Professor Giovanni Canestrini, also of Padua University. When the tomb was opened, the skull was discovered in fragments and a DNAtest revealed that the skull was not Petrarch’s,^[52] prompting calls for the return of Petrarch’s skull.

The researchers are fairly certain that the body in the tomb is Petrarch’s due to the fact that the skeleton bears evidence of injuries mentioned by Petrarch in his writings, including a kick from a donkeywhen he was 42.^[53]

Works in English translation

• Francesco Petrarch, Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarium libri),translated by Aldo S. Bernardo (New York: Italica Press, 2005). Volume 1, Books 1-8; Volume 2, Books 9-16; Volume 3, Books 17-24.
• Francesco Petrarch, Letters of Old Age (Rerum senilium libri), translated by Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin & Reta A. Bernardo (New York: Italica Press, 2005). Volume 1, Books 1-9; Volume 2, Books 10-18.
• Francesco Petrarch, My Secret Book, (Secretum), translated by Nicholas Mann. Harvard University Press.
• Francesco Petrarch, On Religious Leisure (De otio religioso), edited & translated by Susan S. Schearer, introduction by Ronald G. Witt (New York: Italica Press, 2002).
• Francesco Petrarch, The Revolution of Cola di Rienzo, translated from Latin and edited by Mario E. Cosenza; 3rd, revised, edition by Ronald G. Musto (New York; Italica Press, 1996).
• Francesco Petrarch, Selected Letters, vol. 1 and 2, translated by Elaine Fantham. Harvard University Press.

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Notes

1. ^ This designation appears, for instance, in a recent review of Carol Quillen’s Rereading the Renaissance.
2. ^ In the Prose della volgar lingua, Bembo proposes Petrarch and Boccaccio as models of Italian style, while expressing reservations about emulating Dante’s usage.
3. ^ Jump up to:^a b Renaissance or Prenaissance, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan. 1943), pp. 69–74; Theodore E. Mommsen, « Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages' » Speculum 17.2 (April 1942: 226–242); JSTOR link to a collection of several letters in the same issue.
4. ^ Jump up to:^a b J.H. Plumb, The Italian Renaissance, 1961; Chapter XI by Morris Bishop « Petrarch », pp. 161–175; New York, American Heritage Publishing, ISBN 0-618-12738-0
5. ^ after « Albertino Mussato » who was the first to be so crowned according to Robert Weiss, The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford, 1973)
6. ^ Plumb, p. 164
7. ^ Pietrangeli (1981), p. 32
8. ^ Kirkham, Victoria (2009). Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. p. 9. ISBN 9780226437439.
9. ^ NSA Family Encyclopedia, Petrarch, Francesco, Volume 11, page 240, Standard Education Corp. 1992
10. ^ Bishop, Morris Petrarch and his World, p. 92; Indiana University Press 1963, ISBN 0-8046-1730-9
11. ^ Plumb, J.H. (1965). Renaissance Profiles (PDF). Harper & Row. p. 4. ISBN 9780061311628.
12. ^ Vittore Branca, Boccaccio; The Man and His Works, tr. Richard Monges, p.113–118
13. ^ Ep. Fam. 18.2 §9
14. ^ « History – Biblioteca Capitolare Verona ».
15. ^ Nicolson, Marjorie Hope; Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (1997), p. 49; ISBN 0-295-97577-6
16. ^ Burckhardt, Jacob. The Civilisation of the Period of the Renaissance in Italy (1860). Translated by S. G. C. Middlemore. Swan Sonnenschein (1904), pp. 301–302.
17. ^ Lynn Thorndike, Renaissance or Prenaissance, Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Jan. 1943), pp. 69–74. JSTOR link to a collection of several letters in the same issue.
18. ^ Such as J. H. Plumb, in his book The Italian Renaissance,
19. ^ Jump up to:^a b c Familiares 4.1 translated by Morris Bishop, quoted in Plumb.
20. ^ Asher, Lyell (1993). « Petrarch at the Peak of Fame ». PMLA. 108 (5): 1050–1063. JSTOR 462985.
21. ^ McLaughlin, Edward Tompkins; Studies in Medieval Life and Literature, p. 6, New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1894
22. ^ Plumb, J. H. (1961). The Horizon Book of the Renaissance. New York: American Heritage. p. 26.
23. ^ Hillman, James (1977). Revisioning Psychology. Harper & Row. p. 197. ISBN 978-0-06-090563-7.
24. ^ James, Paul (Spring 2014). « Emotional Ambivalence across Times and Spaces: Mapping Petrarch’s Intersecting Worlds ». Exemplaria. 26 (1): 82. Retrieved 4 August 2015.
25. ^ Plumb, p. 165
26. ^ The last lay of Petrarch’s cat, Notes and Queries, Vol. V, Number 121, February 21, 1852, Author: Various, Editor: George Bell
27. ^ Bishop, pp. 360, 366. Francesca and the quotes from there;^{[clarification needed]} Bishop adds that the dressing-gown was a piece of tact: « fifty florins would have bought twenty dressing-gowns ».
28. ^  Tedder, Henry Richard; Brown, James Duff (1911). « Libraries § Italy.« . In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 573.
29. ^ Francesco Petrarch, On Religious Leisure (De otio religioso),edited & translated by Susan S. Schearer, introduction by Ronald G. Witt (New York: Italica Press, 2002).
30. ^ Sturm-Maddox, Sara (2010). Petrarch’s Laurels. Pennsylvania State UP. p. 153. ISBN 9780271040745.
31. ^ « I Tatti Renaissance Library/Forthcoming and Published Volumes ». Hup.harvard.edu. Retrieved July 31, 2009.
32. ^ Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum familiarium libri), translated by Aldo S. Bernardo, 3 vols.’ and Letters of Old Age (Rerum senilium libri), translated by Aldo S. Bernardo, Saul Levin & Reta A. Bernardo, 2 vols.
33. ^ Petrarch’s Letter to Posterity (1909 English translation, with notes, by James Harvey Robinson)
34. ^ Wilkins Ernest H (1964). « On the Evolution of Petrarch’s Letter to Posterity ». Speculum. 39 (2): 304–308. doi:10.2307/2852733. JSTOR 2852733.
35. ^ Plumb, p. 173
36. ^ April 6, 1327 is often thought to be Good Friday based on poems 3 and 211 of Petrarch’s Il Canzoniere, but in fact that date fell on Monday in 1327. The apparent explanation is that Petrarch was not referring to the variable date of Good Friday but to the date fixed by the death of Christ in absolute time, which at the time was thought to be April 6 (Mark Musa, Petrarch’s Canzoniere, Indiana University Press, 1996, p. 522).
37. ^ Petrarch (2004-03-04). « Petrarch ». Petrarch. Retrieved 2017-08-23.
38. ^ « Petrarch (1304–1374) – The Complete Canzoniere: 123-183 ». http://www.poetryintranslation.com.
39. ^ Anna Chiappinelli, « La Dolce Musica Nova di Francesco Landini » Sidereus Nuncius, 2007, pp. 55-91 [1] Archived February 2, 2011, at the Wayback Machine.
40. ^http://it.wikisource.org/wiki/Canzoniere_%28Rerum_vulgarium_fragmenta%29/Aura_che_quelle_chiome_bionde_et_crespe^{[full citation needed]}
41. ^http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Italian/PetrarchCanzoniere184-244.htm#_Toc11161988^{[full citation needed]}
42. ^ « Archived copy » (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 12, 2013. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
43. ^ « The Oregon Petrarch Open Book – « Petrarch is again in sight« « . petrarch.uoregon.edu.
44. ^ « Movements : Poetry through the Ages ». http://www.webexhibits.org.
45. ^ See for example Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship 1300-1850, Oxford University Press, 1976, p. 1; Gilbert Highet, The Classical Tradition, Oxford University Press, 1949, p. 81-88.
46. ^ Famous First Facts International, H. W. Wilson Company, New York 2000, ISBN 0-8242-0958-3, page 303, item 4567.
47. ^ Petrarca, Francesco (1879). De vita Solitaria (in Italian). Bologna: Gaetano Romagnoli.
48. ^ « Skuola.net, Il Rinascimento » (in Italian). Skuola.net. Retrieved 11 September 2015.
49. ^ Encyclopedia of the Renaissance: Class-Furió Ceriol, Volume 2, page 106, Paul F. Grendler, Renaissance Society of America, Scribner’s published in association with the Renaissance Society of America, 1999. ISBN 978-0-684-80509-2
50. ^ Mailman, Joshua B. (2009). « An Imagined Drama of Competitive Opposition in Carter’s Scrivo in Vento, with Notes on Narrative, Symmetry, Quantitative Flux and Heraclitus ». Music Analysis. 28 (2–3): 373–422. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2249.2011.00295.x.
51. ^ Spencer, Patricia (2008) « Regarding Scrivo in Vento: A Conversation with Elliott Carter » Flutest Quarterly summer.
52. ^ Caramelli D, Lalueza-Fox C, Capelli C, et al. (November 2007). « Genetic analysis of the skeletal remains attributed to Francesco Petrarch ». Forensic Sci. Int. 173 (1): 36–40. doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2007.01.020. PMID 17320326.
53. ^ « UPF.edu » (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on March 6, 2009. Retrieved March 1, 2009.

References

• Bartlett, Kenneth R. (1992). The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance; a Source Book. Lexington: D.C. Heath and Company. ISBN 0-669-20900-7
• Bishop, Morris (1961). « Petrarch. » In J. H. Plumb (Ed.), Renaissance Profiles, pp. 1–17. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0-06-131162-6 .
• Hanawalt, A. Barbara. The Middle Ages:An Illustrated History pp. 131–132 Oxford University Press New York 1998
• James, Paul (2014). « Emotional Ambivalence across Times and Spaces: Mapping Petrarch’s Intersecting Worlds ». Exemplaria. 26 (1): 81–104. doi:10.1179/1041257313z.00000000044.
• Kallendorf, Craig. « The Historical Petrarch, » The American Historical Review, Vol 101, No. 1 (Feb. 1996): 130-141.

Further reading

• Bernardo, Aldo (1983). « Petrarch. » In Dictionary of the Middle Ages, volume 9.
• Celenza, Christopher S. (2017). Petrarch: Everywhere a Wanderer. London: Reaktion. ISBN 9781780238388
• Hennigfeld, Ursula (2008). Der ruinierte Körper. Petrarkistische Sonette in transkultureller Perspektive. Würzburg, Königshausen & Neumann, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8260-3768-9.
• Hollway-Calthrop, Henry. (1907). Petrarch: His Life and Times, Methuen. From Google Books.
• Kohl, Benjamin G. (1978). « Francesco Petrarch: Introduction; How a Ruler Ought to Govern His State, » in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G. Witt, 25-78. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1097-2
• Mailman, Joshua B. (2009) « Imagined Drama of Competitive Opposition in Carter’s Scrivo in Vento (with Notes on Narrative, Symmetry, Quantitative Flux and Heraclitus) » Music Analysisv.28, 2-3.
• Nauert, Charles G. (2006). Humanism and the Culture of Renaissance Europe: Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-54781-4
• Rawski, Conrad H. (1991). Petrarch’s Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul A Modern English Translation of De remediis utriusque Fortune, with a Commentary. ISBN 0-253-34849-8
• Robinson, James Harvey (1898). Petrarch, the First Modern Scholar and Man of Letters Harvard University
• Kirkham, Victoria and Armando Maggi. (2009). Petrarch: A Critical Guide to the Complete Works. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-43741-5.
• A. Lee, Petrarch and St. Augustine: Classical Scholarship, Christian Theology and the Origins of the Renaissance in Italy, Brill, Leiden, 2012, ISBN 9789004224032
• N. Mann, Petrarca [Ediz. orig. Oxford University Press (1984)] – Ediz. ital. a cura di G. Alessio e L. Carlo Rossi – Premessa di G. Velli, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 1993, ISBN 88-7916-021-4
• Il «Canzoniere» di Francesco Petrarca. La Critica Contemporanea, G. Barbarisi e C. Berra (edd.), LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 1992, ISBN 88-7916-005-2
• G. Baldassari, Unum in locum. Strategie macrotestuali nel Petrarca politico, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2006, ISBN 88-7916-309-4
• Francesco Petrarca, Rerum vulgarium Fragmenta. Edizione critica di Giuseppe Savoca, Olschki, Firenze, 2008, ISBN 978-88-222-5744-4
• Plumb, J. H., The Italian Renaissance, Houghton Mifflin, 2001, ISBN 0-618-12738-0
• Giuseppe Savoca, Il Canzonieredi Petrarca. Tra codicologia ed ecdotica, Olschki, Firenze, 2008, ISBN 978-88-222-5805-2
• Roberta Antognini, Il progetto autobiografico delle « Familiares » di Petrarca, LED Edizioni Universitarie, Milano, 2008, ISBN 978-88-7916-396-5.
• Paul Geyer und Kerstin Thorwarth (hg), Petrarca und die Herausbildung des modernen Subjekts (Göttingen, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009) (Gründungsmythen Europas in Literatur, Musik und Kunst, 2).

Petrarchat Wikipedia’s sister projects

• Media from Wikimedia Commons
• Quotations from Wikiquote
• Texts from Wikisource

• Petrarch and his Cat Muse
• Canzoniere (different edition) and other works
• Petrarch from the Catholic Encyclopedia
• Excerpts from his works and letters
• Francesco Petrarca (Petrarch) (1304-1374)
• Works by Francesco Petrarca at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Francesco Petrarca at Internet Archive
• Works by or about Petrarch at Internet Archive
• Works by Petrarch at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks) 
• Timeline of life of Petrarch
• Poems From The Canzoniere, translated by Tony Kline.
• Francesco Petrarch at The Online Library of Liberty
• De remediis utriusque fortunae, Cremonae, B. de Misintis ac Caesaris Parmensis, 1492. (Vicifons)
• Free scores of works by Petrarch in the Choral Public Domain Library(ChoralWiki)
• Petrarch and Laura Multi-lingual site including translated works in the public domain and biography, pictures, music.
• Petrarch – the poet who lost his head April 2004 article in The Guardianregarding the exhumation of Petrarch’s remains
• Oregon Petrarch Open Book – A working database-driven hypertext in and around Francis Petrarch’s Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta (Canzoniere)
• Historia Griseldis From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress
• Francesco Petrarch, De viris illustribus, digitized French codex, at Somni

hide v t e Petrarch
Works	Poetry Canzoniere (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta) Africa Trionfi Bucolicum carmen Treatises De viris illustribus De remediis utriusque fortunae De vita solitaria De otio religiosorum Rerum memorandarum libri Epistles Familiares « Ascent of Mont Ventoux«  Liber sine nomine Seniles Letter to Posterity Others Secretum Itinerarium syriacum
Related people	Philippe de Cabassoles Laura de Noves Ser Petracco Stefano Colonna Dionigi di Borgo San Sepolcro Francescuolo da Brossano Giovanni Boccaccio Dante Alighieri Robert, King of Naples Francesco Nelli Simone Martini Giovanni Colonna Lodewijk Heyligen
Miscellaneous	Petrarch’s library Petrarchan sonnet Petrarch’s and Shakespeare’s sonnets Arquà Petrarca Influence of Italian humanism on Chaucer Palazzo Molina Petrarca-Preis award

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrarch

http://www.giacobbegiusti.com

Giacobbe Giusti, Portrait of Laura in the Laurentian Library, Florence

Giacobbe Giusti, Portrait of Laura in the Laurentian Library, Florence

 

Giacobbe Giusti, Laura de Noves

Laura de Noves

Laura de Noves (1310–1348) was the wife of Count Hugues de Sade (ancestor of Marquis de Sade). She could be the Laura that the Humanist poet Francesco Petrarch  wrote about extensively; however, she has never been positively identified as such.^[1]Laura had a great influence on Petrarch’s life and lyrics. The historical information on Laura is meager at best.

Born six years after Petrarch in 1310 in Avignon, she was the daughter of a knight, Audibert de Noves and his wife Ermessenda. She married at the age of 15 on 16 January 1325. Petrarch saw her for the first time two years later on 6 April (Good Friday) in 1327 at Easter mass in the church of Sainte-Claire d’Avignon.

Not much is known about her other than she did have a large family, was a virtuouswife, and died in 1348. Since this first encounter with Laura, Petrarch spent the next three years in Avignon singing his purely platonic love and haunting Laura in church and on her walks. After this Petrarch left Avignon and went to Lombez (a French department of Gers) where he held a canonry gifted by Pope Benedict XII. Her possible tomb could have been discovered by the French poet Maurice Scève in 1533.^[2]

In 1337 he returned to Avignon and bought a small estate at Vaucluse to be near his dear Laura. Here, for the next three years, he wrote numerous sonnets in her praise.^[3] Petrarch’s Canzoniere (Songbook) is the lyrics to her in the troubadour tradition of courtly love. They advanced the growth of Italian as a literary language. They also popularized this form of sonnet that is called Petrarchan sonnet. Years after her death Petrarch wrote his Trionfi, which is a religious allegory in which Laura is idealized.^[4]

References

1. Jump up^ New Standard Encyclopedia, 1992 by Standard Educational Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; page P-240
2. Jump up^ Giudici, Enzo, (in Italian) Bilancio di un’annosa questione: Maurice Scève e la « scoperta » della « tomba di Laura , 1980 OCLC 715861236
3. Jump up^ American International Encyclopedia, publisher J.J. Little, New York 1954; reference article – ‘Petrarch’
4. Jump up^ New Standard Encyclopedia, 1992 by Standard Educational Corporation, Chicago, Illinois; page P-241

•  Media related to Laura de Noves

Laure de Sade

Giacobbe Giusti,  Laure de Sade

Laure de Sade, Villa Torlonia, Rome

Données clés

Nom de naissance	Laure de Sade
Alias	Laure aux mains blanches
Naissance	1310 Noves
Décès	1348 Avignon
Nationalité	provençale
Pays de résidence	Avignon et Comtat Venaissin
Activité principale	mère de famille
Autres activités	Muse de poète
Ascendants	fille d’Ermessande de Réal et d’Audibert de Noves
Conjoint	Hugues II de Sade
Descendants	Hugues III, aïeul du Marquis de Sade

Laure de Sade (1310–1348), dite aussi Laure de Noves^{N 1} (par erreur ?)¹, fille d’Ermessande de Réal et du chevalier Audibert de Noves, muse de Pétrarque et aïeule du Marquis de Sade².

Biographie

Laure épousa Hugues II de Sade^{N 2}, dans la Chapelle des Pénitents Blancs bibliothèque de Noves, comme le précise le contrat de mariage rédigé le 16 juin1325 par le notaire Raymond Fogasse.

Laure, elle-même poète

Avec Phanette de Gantelmes, sa tante, et plusieurs autres dames, elle tenait cour d’amour et rimait³.

Le coup de foudre de Pétrarque

Plaque commémorative apposée par l’Académie de Vaucluse sur la façade du couvent Sainte-Claire

Le 6 avril1327, alors qu’elle sortait de l’église du couvent de Sainte-Claire à Avignon, elle fut aperçue et remarquée par François Pétrarque. Dès lors, Laure aux blanches mains, devint la chaste inspiratrice du poète. Lui, qui affirmait haïr la cité papale, versifia :

Béni soit le jour et le mois et l’année,
La saison et le temps, l’heure et l’instant
Et le beau pays, le lieu où fut atteint
Par deux beaux yeux qui m’ont tout enchaîné.

C’est Mario Fubini⁴, qui remarque que, lorsque le poète décrit le ravissement qui l’envahit en contemplant Laure, il ose la comparer à la « Vision Béatifique »^{N 3}

Laure a-t-elle existé ?

Giacobbe Giusti,  Laure de Sade

Maison de Pétrarque
Laure et le poète

Nicholas Mann, professeur anglais d’histoire de la tradition antique au Warburg Institute de Londres, a lancé le pavé dans la mare lors d’une communication faite le 7 mai1994 au cours des assises de l’Institut d’Études Latines qui se tenaient à la Sorbonne⁵.

Rappelant le mythe de la nymphe Daphné qui, poursuivie par Apollon amoureux, implora son père Pénée de la changer en laurier⁶, il assimile Pétrarque au dieu solaire. Le poète serait tombé amoureux du laurier tout comme le dieu grec, à preuve qu’il s’en fit couronner à Rome. Cela l’aurait tellement obsédé qu’il décida qu’il lui fallait une bien-aimée portant ce nom tout comme Apollon^{N 4}.

À titre d’argument pour étayer sa thèse, il souligne que, dans les sonnets du Canzionere, cette muse littéraire est le plus souvent désignée sous des homonymes LAURO (le laurier), l’AURA (le vent), l’AUREO (le doré)^{N 5}, etc. Il néglige cependant de rappeler que le poète la désignait aussi sous le gracieux diminutif de LAURETTA.

Enfin, il se lance dans une démonstration où les chiffres 6 et 7 prennent une dimension inattendue. La première rencontre du poète avec Laure se fit le 6 avril1327, elle mourut le 6 avril1348 et Pétrarque se fit couronner le 6 avril1341. Mais tout ce bel échafaudage s’effondre devant les faits historiques puisque Pétrarque ne fut pas couronné le 6 avril mais le 8 avril⁷.

Ceci ayant été occulté, le professeur se lance dans un petit calcul démontrant que le poète aurait créé une structure idéale de 3 x 7 dans laquelle il aurait intégré une Laure imaginaire. De 1327 à 1341, après quatorze ans d’amour et de composition poétique, il fut couronné de lauriers et décida de faire mourir sa muse sept ans plus tard, en 1348^{N 6}.

Et Mann de conclure à propos de ce « jeune poète ambitieux aspirant à la gloire » :

« Ce n’est que plus tard qu’il se rend compte que la création d’une dame munie d’un nom évocateur pourrait rehausser sa gloire et, y ajoutant une dimension jusque-là absente, rehausser son art ».

Un éminent pétrarquien lui avait déjà répondu préalablement :

« Ni les images très précises qui tissent la matière lyrique, ni les transfigurations et les règles imposées par la tradition littéraire – sans compter les déclarations explicites de l’auteur lui-même (Familiares, II, IX) – ne permettent de réduire Laure à un symbole ou à une allégorie »⁸.

Et parmi les déclarations explicites du poète, il y a la lettre à Giacomo Colonna, parue dans ses Epistolæ metricæ, I, 6, et qui a été écrite à Vaucluse, vers l’été ou l’automne 1338« Il est dans mon passé une femme à l’âme remarquable, connue des siens par sa vertu et sa lignée ancienne et dont l’éclat fut souligné et le nom colporté au loin par mes vers. Sa séduction naturelle dépourvue d’artifices et le charme de sa rare beauté lui avaient jadis livré mon âme. Dix années durant j’avais supporté le poids harassant de ses chaînes sur ma nuque, trouvant indigne qu’un joug féminin ait pu m’imposer si longtemps une telle contrainte »⁹.

Les portraits de Laure

Ce faisant, le professeur londonien néglige de signaler qu’en 1344, Simone Martini, à la demande du poète, réalisa deux médaillons à son effigie et à celle de Laure^{N 7}.

De même qu’à Naples, la reine Jeannecommandita, quelques décennies plus tard, les fresques de la chapelle de Sancta Maria dell’Incoronata qui venait d’être édifiée entre 1360et 1373. Celles des voûtes représentent les sept sacrements et le Triomphe de l’Église. Elles ont été réalisées par l’un des élèves du Siennois Ambrogio Lorenzetti. Parmi les figures, les spécialistes ont pu identifier les portraits de Robert d’Anjou, de la reine Jeanne, ainsi que ceux de Pétrarque et de Laure, assistant au baptême de Giovanni, le fils du poète.

Au siècle suivant, Giovanni di Ser Giovanni, dit lo Scheggia (1406–1486), peignit a tempere sur bois Le triomphe de l’Amour. Laure et Pétrarque y sont représentés, le poète carressant de sa main droite la joue de sa muse. Cette œuvre se trouve exposée à Florence¹⁰.

Francesco Laurana (1430–1562), sculpteur et médailler d’origine dalmate qui vint s’établir à Avignon, sculpta dans le marbre le Masque mortuaire de Laure qui, aujourd’hui, fait partie des collections du Musée Granet d’Aix-en-Provence¹¹.

Mais le plus célèbre portrait de Laure appartient à la famille de Sade. Il fut à la base d’une vaste série iconographique à partir du xvii^e siècle, après que Richard de Sade en eut fait tenir une copie au cardinal Francesco Barberini en 1636. En dépit de sa célébrité, il est assuré que ce dernier portrait ne peut être qu’un faux daté de la Renaissance^{N 8}.

La mort de Laure

La tradition veut que la dernière rencontre entre le poète et sa muse eut lieu à Avignon, le 27 septembre1347.

L’éternel amour de Pétrarque succomba, le 6 avril1348, vingt-et-un ans jour pour jour après sa rencontre avec le poète. Sur son exemplaire de Virgile, il consigna son affliction :

« Laure, illustre par ses vertus et fort célébrée dans mes vers, m’apparut pour la première fois pendant ma jeunesse en 1327, le 6 avril dans l’église Sainte-Claire à Avignon, à la première heure du jour ; et dans la même cité dans le même mois, au même sixième jour et à la même première heure en l’an 1348, cette éclatante beauté fut soustraite à la lumière alors que j’étais à Vérone, bien portant, ignorant hélas de mon malheur ! Mais la malheureuse nouvelle me fut apportée à Parme par une lettre de mon ami Louis^{N 9} dans le dix-neuvième jour du mois suivant. Ce corps si beau et si chaste de Laure fut enseveli au couvent des frères mineurs, le jour même de sa mort à vêpres. »

Giacobbe Giusti,  Laure de Sade

Ancienne chapelle des Cordeliers d’Avignon

Elle n’était âgée que de trente-huit ans^{N 10}.

La mort de Laure, à l’existence si hypothétique^{N 11}, n’empêcha point le poète de continuer à chanter ses amours pour la belle Provençale et à réunir pour la postérité sonnets et chansons qui allaient former le très célèbre Canzoniere.

Il y fait même allusion dans ses Trionfi :

Non point pâle, mais plus blanche que neige,
Tombée sur la colline par un temps calme,
Elle semblait reposée comme fatiguée,
On eût dit qu’un doux sommeil fermait ses beaux yeux,
La mort elle-même paraissait belle sur son beau visage.
Le Triomphe de la Mort

Elle fut inhumée dans la chapelle des Sade, aux cordeliers d’Avignon. Devant l’autel, sa pierre sépulcrale portait deux écussons armoriés gravés dans la pierre, le seul déchiffrable arborait « deux branches de laurier en sautoir entourant une croix alaisée et surmontées d’une rose héraldique ». C’est ce qu’affirmèrent avoir vu le poète Maurice Scève qui, en 1533, fit ouvrir la tombe et, quelques mois plus tard, François I^er qui vint exprès à Avignon pour se recueillir sur la tombe de Laure^{N 12}.

Article détaillé : Rue des Teinturiers (Avignon).

Les aïeux du marquis de Sade

Laure laissait onze enfants : Paul, Audebert, Hugues – dit Hugues III, l’ancêtre du « Divin Marquis » – Pierre, Jacques, Joannet, Philippe, Augière, Ermessande, Marguerite et Gersande². Hugues se remaria avec Verdaine de Tentelive, dite Dame Trente-Livres, qui ne lui fit que six autres enfants^{N 13}.

Hugues III, troisième fils de Laure, s’installa pour ses affaires durant des années dans la ville d’Apt. On sait qu’en 1364, les syndics le chargèrent d’intervenir auprès d’Urbain V pour la création d’un collège. En 1387, il revint vivre à Avignon près de l’ancienne commanderie du Temple, en un Hôtel sis au n^o 19 de l’actuelle rue Saint-Agricol. En 1407, Hugues III, fils de Laure et de Hugues II, fut inhumé selon ses désirs testamentaires dans la chapelle des Cordeliers d’Avignon où reposaient déjà ses parents. En 1572, on signalait à Avignon une rue « anciennement appelée des Ortolans ou d’Hugues de Sade » puis, en 1647, « la rue Dorée qui est autrement dite rue de Sade »¹².

Laure face à la postérité

Giacobbe Giusti,  Laure de Sade

La Primavera de Sandro Botticelli

Mario Fubini notait dans son étude sur « Laure »¹³ que :

« Pour Pétrarque, la beauté de Laure est inséparable de celle de la nature au sein de laquelle elle vit. »

Quand il réalisa, en 1482, sa Primavera pour le mariage de Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de Médicis, cousin de Laurent de Médicis, avec Sémiramis Appiani, Sandro Botticelli eut le même sentiment en plaçant son héroïne au milieu d’une nature éblouissante qui s’incline devant elle.

L’opinion de Voltaire et du marquis de Sade

L’abbé Jacques de Sade écrivit ses Mémoires pour la vie de François Pétrarque où il démontra que Laure, dont certains doutaient de l’existence, était son aïeule. À la lecture de l’exemplaire que lui avait fait parvenir l’abbé, Voltaire lui écrivit de Ferney, le 12 février1764 : « Vous remplissez, Monsieur, le devoir d’un bon parent de Laure et je vous crois allié de Pétrarque, non seulement par le goût et les grâces mais parce que je ne crois point du tout que Pétrarque ait été assez sot pour aimer vingt ans une ingrate »¹⁴.

Quand son neveu, le Marquis de Sade, reçut ce livre à Vincennes où il était emprisonné, il lui fit un tel effet, qu’il écrivit le 17 février1779 à son épouse qu’il lui avait fait tourner la tête.

L’hommage de Victor Hugo

Pour célébrer Pétrarque, le grand poète ne put le faire qu’à travers sa muse. Sur la page de garde d’un Canzoniere¹⁵, il rima :

« Quand d’une aube d’amour mon âme se colore,
Quand je sens ma pensée, ô chaste amant de Laure,
Loin du souffle glacé d’un vulgaire moqueur,
Éclore feuille à feuille au plus profond du cœur,
Je prends ton livre saint qu’un feu céleste embrase,
Où si souvent murmure à côté de l’extase. »

Notes et références

Notes

1. ↑ Ève Duperray, conservatrice du Musée Pétrarqueà Fontaine de Vaucluse, avoue cependant «Dame Laure dont il est bien difficile de nos jours de savoir si elle fut de Noves, du Thor ou de Lagnes »
2. ↑ Hugues était le fils de Paul, issu d’une des plus anciennes et des plus illustres familles marchandes de la ville d’Avignon. Son grand-père, Garnier de Sade avait été chenevassier (chanvrier) et s’était associé à un riche négociant dénommé Jean Teissière (Johannès Textoris), chanvrier et cordier d’Avignon, tenant boutique en face l’église Saint-Pierre. Grâce à sa fortune considérable Garnier avait siégé au Conseil de Ville comme syndic. La famille de Sade, dont le commerce se faisait sur les deux rives du Rhône, participa toujours à l’entretien du pont Saint-Bénézet, ses armoiries sont toujours visibles sur la première arche.
3. ↑ Jean XXII avait récemment révolutionné l’Église avec cette Vision Béatifique.
4. ↑ En grec, nymphe et laurier portent le même nom.
5. ↑ Peut-on rappeler à l’éminent professeur d’histoire de la tradition antique du Warburg Institute de Londres que Pétrarque désignait Avignon sous le nom d’Epy, l’apôtre Pierre sous celui de Pamphyle, quant à Clément V, il était affublé du pseudonyme d’Epycus, et Clément VI de celui de Miltion ?
6. ↑ Pétrarque, machiavélique avant l’heure, aurait donc concocté sa machination lors de son couronnement dans la salle d’audience du Sénat romain sur le Capitole de Rome. Mais à quelle date ?
7. ↑ Ces deux médaillons furent conservés à Florence par les banquiers Peruzzi. Le poète, dans son dialogue avec saint Augustin, s’est plu à se faire réprimander par le docteur de l’Église : «La présence de Laure ne vous suffisait pas. Vous avez fait faire par un peintre habile un portrait d’elle que vous puissiez porter partout ».
8. ↑ Mais le portrait de la famille de Sade fut réalisé tardivement, sans doute lors de la Renaissance si l’on se base sur le costume rouge de Laure, typique de cette période.
9. ↑ Il s’agit de Louis Sanctus de Beeringen.
10. ↑ La cause de la disparition de Laure n’est pas établie de façon indubitable bien que la plupart des historiens penchent pour la Peste Noire. D’autres pensent qu’elle succomba à une phtisie occasionnée par l’épuisement dû à ses onze accouchements.
11. ↑ Certains, tout en ne niant pas que Laure ait bel et bien existé, refusent énergiquement qu’elle soit par son mariage l’aïeule du Divin Marquis. Il faut donc qu’elle soit autre que Laure de Noves. On lui donne donc toutes les ascendances possibles de la famille des Baux à celle des Adhémar de Monteil. Il se trouve même un original qui a tranché en faveur d’une Laurette, fille de Henri Chabaud, seigneur de Cabrières. Or s’il y a deux Cabrières, l’un près d’Avignon, l’autre près de Pertuis, ni l’un ni l’autre n’ont eu de seigneur portant ce nom
12. ↑ Marc Maynègre, membre de l’Académie de Vaucluse, a démontré, en dépit des exagérations des « inventeurs » de son tombeau, qu’il y avait une quasi-certitude que le texte de Pétrarque affirmant que sa muse était inhumée chez les frères mineurs d’Avignon soit véridique. Cf. liens externes
13. ↑ Hugues II de Sade testa le 14 novembre 1364 et sa seconde épouse le 9 janvier 1399.

Références

1. ↑ Les différentes Laure de Pétrarque Emmanuel Davin, Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé : Lettres d’humanité (1956, Numéro LH-15 pp. 83-104) [archive]
2. ↑ ^a et b Gilbert Lely, La vie et l’œuvre du Marquis de Sade, Éd. Albatros, Paris, 2001, p. 8.
3. ↑ Les vies des plus célèbres et anciens poètes provençaux par Jean de Nostredame [archive]Cet ouvrage, sujet à caution, est annoté par Camille Chabaneau et Joseph Anglade : le lecteur ou la lectrice, qui souhaite approfondir le sujet, lira utilement leurs commentaires
4. ↑ Mario Fubini fut professeur de littérature italienne à l’Université de Milan et à l’Université Bocconi.
5. ↑ Sa communication a été publiée dans le Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé en décembre 1994 sous le titre Pétrarque et les métamorphoses de Daphné.
6. ↑ Cf. Les Métamorphoses d’Ovide.
7. ↑ E. G. Léonard, Les Angevins de Naples, Paris, 1954.
8. ↑ Vittore Branca, Pétrarque in Encyclopedia Universalis, Paris, 1985.
9. ↑ Colette Lazam, op. cit., p. 28-29.
10. ↑ Museo di Palazzo Davanzati, Inv. 1890, n^o 1611.
11. ↑ Ce masque mortuaire est classé Inv. Gal. 1.46.S.
12. ↑ J. Girard, Évocation du vieil Avignon, Les Éditions de Minuit, Paris, 1958.
13. ↑ Cf. Mario Fubini, op. cité.
14. ↑ Lettre CXLVI à M. le comte de Sade. Ève Duperray, François Pétrarque, (1304-1374) avec traduction en italien de Roberto Lisciandro, Éd. Musée Pétrarque, Fontaine-de-Vaucluse, 1987.
15. ↑ Vers de Victor Hugo, sur la page de garde d’unCanzoinere [archive]

Bibliographie

• Abbé de Sade, Mémoires pour la vie de François Pétrarque, tirés de ses œuvres et des auteurs contemporains avec les notes ou dissertations et les pièces justificatives, T. I à III, Amsterdam-Avignon, 1764-1767.
• Abbé Costaing de Pusignan, La Muse de Pétrarque dans les collines de Vaucluse ou Laure des Baux, sa solitude et son tombeau dans le vallon de Galas. Paris-Avignon, 1819.
• Stéphanie-Félicité, comtesse de Genlis, Pétrarque et Laure, Paris, 1819.
• H. Olivier-Vitalis, L’illustre châtelaine des environs de Vaucluse. Dissertation et examen critique des diverses opinions des écrivains qui se sont occupés de cette belle Laure, que le divin poète toscan a immortalisée, et dont lui seul nous a fourni quelques données pour son intéressante biographie, Paris, 1842.
• C. F. Trachsel, Laurea Noves Petræ-Amata. Médaille originale du XIV^e siècle jusqu’à présent inédite, décrite par [l’auteur], Annuaire de la Société numismatique, 1895.
• C. F. Trachsel, Franciscus Petrarca nuncius apud republicam Venetiam pax fecit cum Januenses. Médaille originale et authentique du XIV^e siècle, jusqu’ici inédite modelée par Memmi, dit Maître Simon de Sienne [Simone Martini], Lausanne, 1900.
• E. Müntz et prince d’Essling, Pétrarque : ses études d’art, son influence sur les artistes, ses portraits et ceux de Laure. Illustrations de ses écrits, Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 1902.
• H. Enjoubert, Les amours de Pétrarque et de Laure de Sabran, Paris, 1941.
• M. Mignon, Laure et Pétrarque, Monaco, 1949.
• Mario Fubini, Laure in Dictionnaire des personnages littéraires et dramatiques de tous les temps et de tous les pays, Éd. S.E.D.E. & V. Bompiani, Paris, 1960.
• A. Paita, Petrarca e Laura, Milan, 2004.
• Colette Lazam(traduction et notes), Karl Heinz Stierle (préface), Pétrarque. Séjour à Vaucluse, Paris, Petite Bibliothèque Payot. Rivages poche, 2009 (ISBN 978-2-7436-1986-2,OCLC 470617806)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_de_Noves

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