Petrarch, Laura and the fire that transforms love in sheet 86 of the Triumphs
A small fire burns in the center of a room. Before the flames, Petrarch and Laura perform an unexpected gesture: they hand Cupid's bow and arrow to the flames. It's a seemingly simple scene, because what burns can be destroyed, but it can also change shape. On folio 86 of the Triumphs, the illuminator doesn't offer a definitive answer: he invites us to observe.
According to tradition, it all began on April 6, 1327, in the church of Sainte-Claire in Avignon. Francesco Petrarca saw a young woman he would call Laura, and that encounter, both real in the poet's memory and transformed by literature, became the origin of one of the most celebrated love stories in European culture.
Laura's historical identity is uncertain: over the centuries she has often been recognized as Laura de Noves, but no identification can be considered definitive.
What remains certain, however, is the role that Petrarch attributed to her in his work: a desired and unattainable presence, consolation and torment, an earthly image capable of opening a moral and spiritual quest.
"One thousand three hundred and twenty-seven, precisely
at the first hour, on the sixth day of April,
I entered the labyrinth, and I see no way out."
In sonnet 211 of the Canzoniere, Petrarch establishes the date with almost notarial precision and, at the same time, transforms it into an image: love is a labyrinth into which one enters without knowing how to get out.
The first flame of our story is born here. It is not yet the fire visible in the Viennese miniature, but it is the fire of passion, restlessness, and memory, which runs through the Songbook and makes Laura much more than a simple biographical figure.
The Songbook follows the oscillations of feeling: desire and repentance, hope and disappointment, presence and absence.
Petrarch doesn't tell a linear love story, but records the contradictory movements of consciousness. He recounts the anxieties that are part, or have been part, of all of our lives.
This is why his voice still seems modern to us: he understands the distance between what we would like to be and what we are, between the clarity of reason and the strength of a feeling that continues to dominate us even when we believe we have understood it.
In his mature decades, alongside the constant revision of the Canzoniere, the Trionfi took shape. The theme was still love, but the perspective changed. The poet no longer merely observed his own emotions: he constructed a grand allegorical journey in which the forces that govern human life confront one another and, one by one, are overcome.
The personal story of Petrarch and Laura thus enters into a larger procession, where individual desire becomes a reflection on the destiny of all.
The work's architecture is built on six successive victories:
Love triumphs over men and shows how difficult it is to escape desire;
Modesty, often also referred to as Chastity, overcomes Love;
Death breaks the victory of Modesty;
Fame attempts to oppose Death by preserving the memory of people;
Time also consumes Fame;
Eternity, finally, surpasses Time and restores everything to a higher dimension.
No triumph is absolute: each force appears invincible only until the arrival of the next.
This succession explains why the Triumphs were so beloved by artists. Chariots, processions, historical figures, biblical characters, ancient heroes, famous lovers, and allegorical personifications offered a nearly inexhaustible repertoire. But above all, they allowed the transformation of thought into image: what Petrarch had entrusted to poetry could become gesture, color, architecture, gaze, and movement.
Folio 86r belongs to Codex 2581, now preserved at the Austrian National Library in Vienna. The manuscript, together with Codex 2582, forms one of the most fascinating illuminated cycles dedicated to the Triumphs. The text testifies to Petrarch's European success: it is preserved in a French version attributed to Simon Bougouyne and was linked to the refined culture of the court of Lorraine, where Italian poetry, French taste, and the art of miniature illumination met in the early 16th century.
The large miniatures are enclosed within architectural frames that make them appear like small theaters. The illuminator does not simply illustrate the text: he interprets it, expands on the episodes, introduces characters, and transforms Petrarch himself into a visible figure. The poet enters his own allegorical world, witnesses the scenes he has imagined, and becomes, for the reader, a guide through history, myth, and moral meditation.
The miniature could be translated into a short sentence: Petrarch and Laura burn Cupid's arrow and bow.
Before asking ourselves what it means, however, it is worth dwelling on what we see.
The scene is set in a Renaissance interior, constructed with the richness of a courtly setting. The floor is made of large green and purple tiles; the background is interspersed with marbled panels, columns, and decorated surfaces; on the left, a large fireplace appears, while the wooden ceiling is punctuated by colored panels.
Petrarch occupies the left part of the composition. He wears a dark purple cloak, trimmed with ermine, with green sleeves and a red hat.
Laura, facing him, is dressed in white, with a subtle black trim that complements the line of her dress. Their gestures are measured, almost ritualistic. Between them, a fire burns directly on the floor, despite the fireplace behind Petrarca, made up of large logs and tall, red and golden flames. It is there that the gaze is drawn.
The image also features a second level. Behind Petrarca and Laura, on a balustrade, a young man observes the scene from above. He does not intervene and does not appear to be engaging in dialogue with the protagonists.
For now, let's leave him in his silence, and return to him. In the foreground, however, everything converges on the flames and the gesture made by the two lovers.
The most immediate interpretation is obvious: Petrarch and Laura are destroying Cupid's weapons, thus breaking the power of earthly love. The bow and arrow are the instruments with which the god strikes down human beings and holds them captive to desire; consigning them to the flames deprives him of the ability to wound. The scene, in fact, belongs to the Triumph of Modesty, in which the amorous force that seemed to dominate every creature encounters a limit.
Yet fire isn't just destruction; human experience has always associated it with transformation: wood turns to ash, metal is melted and purified, clay takes on a new consistency in the kiln. The miniaturist certainly hadn't studied chemistry on Chiorboli and had no knowledge of modern chemistry, but it's enough to recognize a material truth known throughout the ages. When something passes through fire, it doesn't return identically. Its form is lost, but the material doesn't simply disappear: it changes state, function, and meaning.
It is then possible that the miniature shows something more subtle than the simple elimination of Cupid.
Perhaps it is not love that is denied, but the way of loving is transformed.
The impulse that in the Canzoniere had taken the form of the labyrinth, of error and of restlessness now undergoes a test.
Cupid's weapons burn, while Petrarch and Laura remain.
Passion loses its tools of domination, but the poetic and spiritual relationship between the two is not erased.
To say that Cupid is simply "defeated" risks impoverishing the scene. His strength is certainly surpassed within the succession of Triumphs, but without him the entire journey would never have begun.
It is the arrow of love that sets Petrarch's story in motion, generating the Canzoniere and, indirectly, the mature reflection of the Triumphs. Cupid leads the poet into the labyrinth, while Modesty allows him to view that labyrinth from a different perspective.
Fire can therefore mark a conclusion, but also a transition. Weapons are no longer needed because they have already had their effect. The love that wounds, conquers, and imprisons is stripped of its violence. What remains can aspire to a less possessive, more conscious form, perhaps closer to memory, knowledge, and spiritual exploration.
This is one possible interpretation. The great miniatures, after all, cannot be exhausted by a single explanation: they continue to live precisely because they retain part of their secret.
Stop for a moment
Return your gaze to the center of the miniature. Observe the distance between Petrarch and Laura, the way their gestures converge toward the fire, the size of the flames compared to the two protagonists. Then try to ask yourself: are they destroying something or witnessing its transformation? Are they building together? The page doesn't force you to choose immediately. It asks us, first of all, to look a second time.
We followed the first spark to Avignon, passed through the Canzoniere and the six Triumphs, and arrived before the fire on folio 86. We observed what burned and tried to distinguish a documented fact—Cupid's bow and arrow consigned to the flames—from the interpretations that gesture continues to suggest. But while our gaze remained drawn to the fire, another figure remained silent, almost hidden in the upper part of the scene.
For over five centuries, that young man has been observing Petrarch and Laura from the loggia. Who is he? Why did the illuminator place him there? Is he merely a spectator within the narrative, or does his presence change the way we ourselves look at the miniature? Next week, we'll lift our gaze from the flames and try to follow his.
