Petrarch 5.0

Not all of Petrarch's readers could read Italian or Latin. Others found him through translations into other European languages that quickly became available. Versions of his works are displayed here in French, Spanish, and German, languages into which it is easy to expect Petrarch soon to have been translated; and—a bit more surprising—Czech. His Latin Africa in Italian ottava rima is a reminder than, even in the Italian peninsula, a writer using two languages might not reach Italians who knew only one. Musical settings of Petrarch's poems exhibit yet another form of "translation."

The 1567 Spanish-language version of Petrarch's Rime, translated by Salomon Usque Hebreo and the Italian-language edition of his Rime issued in 1503 by Gershom Soncino's press at Fano suggest another aspect of Petrarch's appeal across borders perhaps less hard and fast than they now seem. Petrarch took only minor orders but was still part of the Church. Yet a later Jewish translator, like an earlier Jewish printer, found his work attractive enough—whether or not its author had been a churchman—to warrant investments of money, time, and intellectual effort. Moreover, the poet's stature allowed Spain's "Rey Catolico" to give his privilege to the "Hebreo's" translation despite the Jewish identity of the translator.

One more form of "translation," unemphasized in an exhibition that concentrates on Petrarch rather than his followers, is suggested by Alvar Gòmez's Spanish version of some of Petrarch's sonnets printed in an edition of Jorge de Montemayor. Wide dissemination of Petrarch's work in both manuscript and print, as well as the high value contemporaries and immediate successors placed on it, quickly made it a model for other writers. In England (entirely unrepresented here), Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, wrote poems deeply influenced by Petrarch generally and occasionally imitative of one or another of his poems specifically. Writers throughout Europe treated him the same way. Petrarch become a well into whose limitless resources writers could dip at will without in any way diminishing his ability to nourish other writers as well as themselves. Gòmez's versions of Petrarch permit the 1580 Antwerp Montemayor to locate that writer among all those who drank of Petrarch before heading off on their own. It gestures at an altogether different exhibition, one not "just as big as this one" but even bigger. Petrarch is only one author. The number of writers he influenced is legion.

But even one writer can be limitless, as Petrarch's followers and imitators knew. Here is a taste of Petrarch as his works begin to circumnavigate the globe.