Il Canzoniere

Its central theme is the poet's love for Laura, a woman Petrarch allegedly met on April 6, 1327, in the Church of Sainte Claire in Avignon.

[4] The most evident purpose of the Canzoniere is to praise Laura, yet questions concerning the virtue of love in relation to the Christian religion and desire are always present.

The love theme itself should be considered as the nucleus around which Petrarch develops his deep psychological analysis: thanks to his poems inspired by Laura (laurus is the symbol for poetry) the poet aspires to reach glory, which in turn can fight the all-destroying power of time.

Petrarch inherited aspects of artifice and rhetorical skill from Sicilian courtly poetry, including that of the inventor of the sonnet form, Giacomo da Lentini.

[5] In addition, the troubadours who wrote love poems concerned with chivalry in Provençal (in the canso or canzone form) are likely to have had an influence, primarily because of the position of adoration in which they placed the female figure.

Dante, and the school of the dolce stil nuovo, or new sweet style, developed this placement of the female and proposed that the pursuit of love was a noble virtue.

After printing, early versions of the Canzoniere were illuminated with pictures.
Two printed pages with the beginning of Petrarch's Canzone 323, Standomi Un Giorno , along with commentary and illustrations which were added later. Petrarch is depicted at his window, overlooking the first of his six visions. Others are also depicted.(1390s)
1470