This project aims to focus attention on a part of the fifteenth-century manuscript
tradition of Petrarch's Canzoniere, at the same time extremely vast and little studied, thanks
to a selection of witnesses conducted starting from the codicological criterion of
dimensions or, better said, of «taglia».
The reasons behind this choice are bond to the innovative features of the successful
Aldo Manuzio’s edition of the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta dating back 1501 – in particular
the in-8° format, which allowed the book to fit perfectly the hand for an easiest and personal
reading – that have been contributing to spread the release to a broader audience: in a very
short time the «petrarchino» became a widely common status symbol object in
Cinquecento’s portraits of wealthy and educated ladies, like those painted by well-known
artists such as Lorenzo Lotto or Andrea Sartori. Recent studies ascribe the birth of this
pocket book model with profane content to the influence that manuscripts of the paduan
scribe Bartolomeo Sanvito may have had on Manuzio: specialised in copying books of
hours, the former is regarded as the first to have adopted their traditionally reduced
dimensions also for classical texts. Neverthless, as shown by an intial catalographic search
indivuating 77 small-sized manuscripts from the fifteenth-century (that is with a
semiperimeter of less than 320 mm), this
model was already used for the copy of Petrarch’s masterpiece before Manuzio and
probably even before Sanvito.
Taken into account how our knowledge about the manuscript tradition of the Rerum
Vulgarium fragmenta is generally rather small, not only according to the characteristics of the
witnesses or their diffusion environments, but also in relation to their own number, the aim
of this investigation is to enlighten the process that transformed the Canzoniere from
Petrarch’s autograph Vat. Lat. 3195 to Manuzio’s Le cose volgari di messer Francesco Petrarcha
in a codicological and paleographical perspective, verifying the existence of contact points
among the witnesses – concerning layout, writing, decoration – and their possible influence
on print production.
Furthermore, a special attention will be payed to the composition of the reading
public, considering its needs and how much it might have affected the formation of the
model itself. In addition, a specific space has to be reserved to the female audience, since
small-sized prayer books were very common among women in late middle ages (to the
point that they were usually named «libricini da donna») and, as said, during XVI century
women are often represented with a «petrarchino» while some of them started to write
petrach-style poems.
The marked interdisciplinary approach, as well as the in-depth description of the
selected corpus, could enhance Petrarchan studies and, more generally, European
intellectual history at the turn of the middle ages and early modern age.

1. Daphne Grieco, Uno, nessuno, centomila. I mille volti del Canzoniere, in «Chroniques italiennes», 42 (2022), pp. 29-45.
2. Daphne Grieco, In merito all’iconografia di Dafne e Apollo nei testimoni del Canzoniere petrarchesco: il manoscritto K.IX.46 degli Intronati di Siena, in Atti del V Seminario annuale di studi petrarcheschi Laureatus in Urbe (University of Notre-Dame & Università degli Studi Roma Tre, 27-28 settembre 2021), Roma, Aracne Editrice, in corso di stampa.
3. Daphne Grieco, I Rerum vulgarium fragmenta tra Vaticano Latino 3195 e aldina: primi appunti sul Petrarca da mano, in «Petrarchesca» 11 (2023), in corso di stampa.