Overview
Biblioteca Riccardiana
Florence
Italy
RVF
Description
300x215 mm; IV + 98 fols.
paper; two scripts: mercantesca for main text and cursive humanistic for the annotations; Petrarch’s poems with one verse per line with annotations distributed in single column on right.
Comincia lauita et la mo[r]te dellaura In Sonetj et Canzone p[er] lo laureato franc[esc]o petrarca poeta fiorentino
fol. Ir: title page written by an eighteenth-century hand: Canzoniere |del | Petrarca;
fols. Iv-IVv: blank;
fols. 1r-69r: RVF 1-263 in altered order (last poem is RVF 190) with annotations for RVF 1-4, 7-8, 11 (‘Comincia lauita et la mo[r]te dellaura In Sonetj et Canzone p[er] lo laureato franc[esc]o petrarca poeta fiorentino. Et prima la uita’);
fol. 69r: colophon: finiscono le ca[n]zoni et sonetti della uita dellaura p[er] [—] [††] franciescho petrarcha laureato fiore[n]tino;
fols. 69r-97v: RVF 264-366 (‘Cominciano quelle della mo[r]te’);
fol. 97v: colophon: finiti esonetti et canzoni della mo[r]te di Laura p[er] mes[ser] f[rancesco] p[etrarcha] fiore[n]tino laureato;
fol. 97v: three-line Latin epitaph for Petrarch (‘Epitaphiu[m] de f[rancesco] p[etrarca] p[oeta] fl[orentino] la[ureato]’; <inc> frigida francisci lapis hic tegit ossa petra[r]ce);
fol. 98r: blank;
fol. 98v: list of domestic objects by a later cursive hand.
Material Copy
Biblioteca Riccardiana
Florence
Italy
There are two series of annotations both by the same hand: 1) concise ones next to lines explaining obscure passages, often introduced by ‘cioe’; 2) some longer ones, set on right, providing an introduction to the sonnets, with a focus on alleged contradictions between different poems (in particular for RVF 1-3), and on the relation between poems and moments of Petrarch’s life (explaining, for instance, that RVF 7 was sent by Petrarch to Boccaccio to invite him to carry on his literary activity).
CPR, 103; Ms.Ricc, 111; Ms.Ricc2, 26