Love and graves between Arquà and Avignon: a further contribution to the ‘Tombaide’ (1540) launched by Alessandro Piccolomini

Abstract

When Alessandro Piccolomini (1508‐79) visited Petrarch's tomb in 1540, he composed a sonnet that was to launch a poetic exchange between fellow literati in his hometown of Siena and in the university town of Padua, where he was currently a student. Some decades later, another Sienese literato, Lattanzio Benucci (1521‐98), wrote a response sonnet closely following Piccolomini in structure, but adopting a different perspective – Benucci's poem does not pay homage to Petrarch's tomb, but to Laura's. This article will bring to light this previously unknown contribution to what has become known as the ‘Tombaide’ of 1540, and discuss the context in which it was composed. In the background lay the growing interest in the places associated with Petrarch and, more specifically, the alleged discovery of Laura's remains in Avignon in 1533. In composing a paean to Laura's tomb, Benucci may well have had his own Laura in mind, that is, his wife Dorotea Tancredi. At the crossroads of poetry and love, of the religious veneration for saints and the secular cult of literature, Benucci's poem illustrates not only an attempt to revive an earlier poetic exchange, but also a complex episode of cultural history in sixteenth‐century Europe.