Petrarch's Laura: The Portraiture of an Imaginary Beloved

Abstract

The portraiture of Laura, the imaginary beloved of the 14th-century poet Petrarch, intermingled illustration of Petrarch's text with the search for Laura's true likeness. Petrarch and Laura are the most portrayed pair of lovers of post-classical times, and many passionate pages record the search for traces of her in his works, in family papers, and in the vicinity of Avignon, France. Her existence chiefly depends on Petrarch's Italian poetry, so her portraiture is confined in the early period to the illustration of those works. The vulgate image of her formed in woodcuts and engravings in the second quarter of the 16th century, and in the late 16th or early 17th century she began to appear in paintings. As the Petrarchan cult grew from the 15th century onward, the search intensified for the true image of Laura that would fit what was known and surmised from two poems about Petrarch's commission to Simone Martini to paint her, as well as what could be asserted about her life and supposed lineage. Much later, there were many erroneous identifications of an actual portrait of Laura.