Francesco Petrarch

Petrarch, the contemporary of Dante and Boccaccio, achieved fame in his own day as a scholar and founder of Renaissance humanism, but today he is chiefly remembered as a poet of love.

His great cycle of sonnets addressed to the dazzling Laura occupied him for forty years, forming an emotional and spiritual autobiography that moves between joy and despair. These poems established the themes and images of love poetry that was to spread throughout Renaissance Europe, influencing Sidney, Spenser, and Shakespeare.

This recording presents fifty-nine of the Laura sonnets, including some of the most powerful, addressed to her spirit after death by the heartbroken poet.