Ancestral Memory and Petrarch’s De Remediis utriusque Fortunae in Carrara Padua

In his pursuit of books, the last seigniorial lord of Padua, Francesco II “il Novello” da Carrara (r. 1390–1405), followed a precedent of patronage set by his father, Francesco I “il Vecchio” (r. 1350–1388). The subjects represented in Francesco Novello’s library, however, differ dramatically from those in his father’s. The elder Francesco’s library—celebrated as one of the richest in northern Italy prior to its seizure by Giangaleazzo Visconti (1351–1402), lord of Milan, in 1388—favored Petrarchan works and those of the poet’s preferred authors from Roman antiquity. It also included the poet’s personal collection, which the elder Francesco inherited upon Petrarch’s death in 1374.¹ In contrast, a partial inventory of Francesco Novello’s book collection taken in May 1404 by Francesco Zago, an administrator in the Carrara court, reveals the younger Francesco’s clear preference for medical books. The theory and practice of medicine are the subjects of more than two-thirds of the sixty-one books recorded by Zago.² Next to the medical books, contemporary local chronicles and family biographies are the most common subject matter.

Francesco Novello’s library did not include any of the traditional Roman texts privileged by Petrarch, and had only one work by the poet himself, De remediis utriusque fortunae (Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul),³ a book of moral philosophy composed late in the poet’s life. The uniqueness of the Petrarchan work in Francesco Novello’s collection is made strikingly apparent on the inventory; it is flanked by the second book of the Antidotarium Nicolai (Nicholas’s Antidotes), a pharmaceutical manual by Nicholas of Salerno (fl. ca. 1150) that was compulsory reading at the medical school in Paris by 1270, and a textbook on remedies available to treat gout.⁴ In a collection clearly dedicated to subjects foreign to the poet’s oeuvre, why did Francesco Novello acquire this particular Petrarchan work?

The book’s presence in the younger Francesco’s library indicates that although Petrarch’s influence was not entirely absent from Francesco Novello’s patronage, it manifested in a radically different way than it did in his father’s. Standing out in contrast to the medical and historical treatises in the collection, the presence of Petrarch’s work bears witness to Francesco Novello’s participation in a larger system of patronage that spanned generations of Carrara rulers. This system enabled the younger Francesco to imitate his ancestors’ patterns of patronage while distinguishing himself as an independent Carrara ruler. The emphasis of dynastic continuity through patterns of patronage is a trend visible across the nearly century-long rule of the Carrara family. So, too, is the trend to add an individualized element to complement that pattern, one unique to the present lord. Francesco Novello used his book collection to advance both of these goals.

When he regained Padua from the Visconti in 1390, Francesco Novello focused his patronage on establishing a new Carrara library. Although this push to rebuild the library is evidence that Francesco shared his father’s view of book collection as an avenue of self-representation, its contents indicate that the younger Francesco wanted to project a very different image of himself as a collector. Francesco Novello’s collection implies that the lord, as owner and reader of the books, possessed the character of a learned man versed in the contemporary healing arts and in the study of local history, rather than the character of a Petrarchan vir illustris, the image his father’s collection had sought to project.

Francesco il Vecchio himself had followed a precedent set by his father, Giacomo II (r. 1345–1350), when he invited Petrarch to join the Carrara court, publicly celebrated the poet’s achievements, and read and collected his works. As an intimate friend of the Carrara court, Petrarch influenced the patronage and self-representation of Giacomo II and Francesco il Vecchio, and this influence has been well studied and documented.⁵ When Petrarch returned to the Carrara court in the late 1360s (many years after his intermittent visits to...