In this epistolary quote, Francesco Petrarch expresses to Giovanni Boccaccio his pleasure at receiving in Venice a copy of the Iliad, which the latter sent to him in 1366: ‘…Homer’s arrival brought joy to all the Latins and Greeks in the library…’ (Rerum senilium libri, VI, 2). Eleven years earlier, Boccaccio had given Petrarch a Latin manuscript copy of Saint Augustine’s Expositions on the Psalms, which we can tell from an inscription in the first volume.

These gifts and the exchange of correspondence demonstrate that both Italian writers contributed to the birth of humanist culture in the late Middle Ages, by recovering authors of Greek and Roman Antiquity, as well as the legacy of early Christian tradition, through a (re)reading of the Church Fathers. This Humanism, which fuelled the Renaissance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, was the starting point for a fresh examination of the relationship between humankind and God, a question that permeated the Modern Era.

In celebration of World Book and Copyright Day on 23 April – as well as marking 720 years since Petrarch’s birth and 650 since his death – the Museum has organised a display around these two writers. It includes the books of their authorship acquired by Calouste Gulbenkian, who was also motivated by the rich bindings and illustrations.

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Presented in two of the Museum’s display cases, this exhibition provides an opportunity to reflect on how the works of Petrarch and Boccaccio were regarded and illustrated during two historical periods: the Renaissance, a time of transition from the illuminated manuscript to the printed book; and the eighteenth-century, marked by imagery of licentiousness and the fête galante.