Petrarch and the Decoration of the Sala Virorum Illustrium in Padua

Abstract

PETRARCH and the Arts is a topic which has often claimed the attention of scholars interested in the history of ideas current during the early Italian Renaissance.1 For throughout his life Petrarch took a great personal interest in the art of his own time, as well as in that of the classical era; he owned works of Giotto and Simone Martini and he concerned himself on many occasions with the archaeological and other remains of Roman antiquity. That the greatest poet then living in Italy distinguished himself also as a connoisseur and collector must have helped the “new” art considerably and increased the critical regard for it of the people of his generation. It is noteworthy that Petrarch remained faithful to his original love although, after the middle of the fourteenth century, there developed among his younger contemporaries “a certain kind of adverse criticism of the work of Giotto and his followers.?”2 Of Petrarch's “fervent, yet systematic and scientific labors devoted to antiquity,” it has justly been said that they “mark a phase of the greatest moment in this developrnent.”3

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