In France, Petrarch studied law, as his father had wished. Caravaggio, or Michelangelo Merisi, was an Italian painter who is considered one of the fathers of modern painting. The sonnets of Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304-74) helped to establish Italian as a literary language. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). In 1333 his journeying took him through France, Flanders, Brabant, and the Rhineland, where he visited men of learning and searched monastic libraries for “lost” Classical manuscripts (in Liège he discovered copies of two speeches by Cicero). He was regarded as the greatest scholar of his age. The collection also contains 317 sonnets; Petrarch was an early practitioner of the form and helped to popularize it. Ring in the new year with a Britannica Membership, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Petrarch, Online Library of Liberty - Biography of Petrarch, Petrarch - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up). The doctrine he espoused became known as humanism, and formed a bridge from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. [pet-rar-kăn]Characteristic of, or derived from, the work of the major Italian poet Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca, 1304–74), especially his sonnets and other love lyrics in Italian. Known in English as Petrarch, Francesco Petrarca was born at dawn on July 20, 1304, in the city of Arezzo, in central Italy, just south of Florence. Petrarch then dissuaded Boccaccio from burning his own works and selling off his personal library, letters, books, and … As one of the world's first classical scholars, Petrarch unearthed vast stores of knowledge in the lost texts he discovered, while his philosophy of humanism helped foment the intellectual growth and accomplishments of the Renaissance. A poet laureate is officially appointed by a government or institution to honor a talented poet. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! There are always eleven syllables, even when the lines have feminine endings. He is also considered one of the fathers of the modern Italian language. Petrarch was a poet and scholar whose humanist philosophy set the stage for the Renaissance. The Italian poet and scholar Francesco Petrarch lived through the most deadly pandemic in recorded history, the Black Death of the 14th century, which saw up to 200 million die from plague across Eurasia and North Africa. Quite apart from his love for Laura, this period was an important one for Petrarch. Francis Petrarch, Letter to Posterity Introduction: Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374 CE) was an Italian poet and scholar who is credited with being one of the first Humanist writers of the Late Medieval/Renaissance. This type of sonnet got its name from … He first saw her in the Church of St. Clare at Avignon on April 6, 1327, and loved her, although she was outside his reach, almost until his death. 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