Boccaccio’s Biographical Tributes to Petrarch

The article reconsiders the opinion expressed by G. Billanovich concerning the relationship between Boccaccio’s ‘Sermo de vita et moribus domini Francisci Petracchi de Florentia’ and Petrarch’s letter ‘Ad Posteritatem’. The detailed analysis of the two texts, and of the circumstances that led the authors to their respective compositions in the ’40s and ’50s of the fourteenth century, shows that the letter to posterity was not written along the lines of the ‘Sermo’ in order to respond to and correct Boccaccio’s claims, but that it was composed independently and has no relation to the ‘Sermo’, if not indirectly. In the second part of the article the ‘Sermo’ is compared with two further biographical portraits that Boccaccio dedicated to Petrarch in the ‘De montibus’ and the ‘Genealogie deorum gentilium’. The scope of this comparison is to evaluate the points of convergence and divergence regarding contents and approach of the ‘Sermo’, which was written before the two poets knew each other personally, and the other two texts, composed after the establishment of their friendship.