Petrarca e la natura

Petrarch went to natural surroundings often and loved them, so that his work and the picture of himself which he intended to transmit to posterity has been deeply influenced by this feeling. He describes himself reading, writing, praying not inside his room, but in the open, lying down on the grass or leaning against a tree, like the poet Vergil in the opening page of the Ambrosian Vergil. For this reason, the sketch of Vaucluse, drawn by Boccaccio in the margins of the Pliny MS Paris Lat. 6802, is not to be interpreted as a naturalistic landscape, but as a symbolic representation of the poet himself. The actual climb to Mont Ventoux, filtered through classical and patristic echoes, becomes the story of an ascetic experience in Fam. IV 1. Finally, the poet who tries to grow laurel in his gardens, use it as the very symbol of his poetry.