Lot 7

Petrarch, Trionfi d'Amore and Trionfi della Castità ('Triumph of Love' and 'Chastity'), fragment from an illuminated manuscript in Italian on vellum

Estimate

3,000 - 5,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

8 leaves (4 bifolia), 135-55mm. by 190-216mm., written space 85mm. by 133mm., single column, 23 lines in dark brown ink in a fine and accomplished humanistic bookhand, one large 5-line initial 'S' (opening the second canto of the Triumph of Love: 'Stanco già di mirar non station ancora ...') in blue, and a single 5-line initial 'Q' (opening the Triumph of Chastity: 'Q[uando] a un giogo & a un tempo vidi ...') in burnished gold with white-vine infill on a background of green and pink, all on blue ground, minor rubbing to one corner of the white-vine initial, some trimming to the base of the leaves but with no effect to text, all somewhat rubbed and faded on verso with numerous seventeenth-century scribbles including the name of Lorenzo Gondi di Firenze, the years 1664-7 and phrases such as 'entrate di bestie' (perhaps from re-use to enclose the accounts of this member of the Gondi family of Florence), hence in somewhat defective condition

Catalogue Note

text

These leaves are from a fine and handsome manuscript of Petrarch's Trionfi, and the text here is that of the entirety of the second canto of the Triumph of Love, part of the fourth canto of the same, and the opening 115 lines of the Triumph of Chastity. The Trionfi, written in terza rima, followed the allegorical works of Dante, setting out a triumphal procession of the allegorical figures Love, Chastity, Death, Fame, Time and Divinity. The poet describes the effect of each on his beloved Laura with imagery drawn from his encyclopaedic knowledge of ancient history, including the fall of Carthage, the march of Xerxes into Greece, and the legends of Perseus, Andromeda, Pygmalion and Camilla and her Amazons. Chastity triumphs over Love, and finally Divinity triumphs over them all, and the poet is united with his love in eternity.

The public fame of Francesco Petrarch (1304-74), the celebrated scholar and composer, father of Renaissance humanism and friend of Boccaccio, was based on these poems. Despite the widespread dissemination of his works in Latin, it was his Italian verse (and notably these compositions), which gave him a vast public following in Italy. They form part of the corpus of poetry composed after Petrarch had given up his vocation as a priest, and after he supposedly caught sight of the woman Laura on Good Friday 1327 in the church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon. He was struck with a lasting passion, and pursued her, only to be rebuked as she was already married (if she existed then she may in fact have been Laura de Noves, the wife of Count Hugues de Sade, and the ancestor of the infamous Marquis de Sade). They had little or no contact after that, and he channelled his energies into the writing of love poetry until her sudden and early death in 1348. In the sixteenth century Pietro Bembo principally based his model for the modern Italian language on these vernacular works of Petrarch.