Central Italian School, first half of the 16th century

Portraits of Petrarch and his beloved Laura de Noves were popular subjects amongst Italian painters of the sixteenth century, deriving from early manuscript illuminations of his work. Here, the likenesses of both sitters derive from a pair of portraits included in a copy of Petrarch's Canzoniere e Trionfi, dated circa 1463, in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence.¹

¹ Petrarch, Poetae clarissimi Francisci Petrarchae Opus, quod vulgo dicitur Canzoniere, praevia tabula, 1401–1500, MS, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence, Plut. 41. 1, f. IXr; http://teca.bmlonline.it/ImageViewer/servlet/ImageViewer?idr=TECA0000623614&keyworks=canzoniere#page/19/mode/1up