Francescuolo da Brossano
Encyclopedia
Francescuolo da Brossano was the son-in-law and heir of the Italian medieval poet Petrarch
Petrarch
Francesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...

.

Born in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, Francescuolo ("Little Francesco") was named executor of Petrarch's testamentum. He married Petrarch's daughter Francesca in 1361, the same year Giovanni (Petrarch's son) died of the plague. Petrarch moved to Venice in the fall of 1362 and lived there for five years. That same year his daughter Francesca, with the young nobleman from Milan, came to Venice and lived with the famous poet at Palazzo Molina
Palazzo Molina
Palazzo Molina or Palace of Two Towers is Petrarch's home also known as "Molina house of the two towers." It has a current address of Riva degli Schiavoni, no. 4145...

. This was shortly after the birth of their first child, a daughter named Eletta. A second grandchild was born in 1366 named Francesco that Petrarch adored. This grandchild however died less than 2 years later.

They lived in a house through 1367 on the most popular promenade in Venice at number 4145 "Riva degli Schiavoni" called Palazzo Molina
Palazzo Molina
Palazzo Molina or Palace of Two Towers is Petrarch's home also known as "Molina house of the two towers." It has a current address of Riva degli Schiavoni, no. 4145...

. Later they moved to Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

 taking Petrarch's library
Petrarch's library
The poet Petrarch arranged to leave his personal library to the city of Venice; but it never arrived. The Venetian tradition that this was the founding of the Biblotheca Marciana is an anachronism; it was founded a century later.-Petrarch's books:...

 with them. Petrarch didn't always live with them, but was much pleased with both his daughter and Francescuolo. He was, however, usually in their company. As executor of Petrarch's estate, Francescuolo da Brossano had some correspondence with Coluccio Salutati
Coluccio Salutati
Coluccio Salutati was an Italian Humanist and man of letters, and one of the most important political and cultural leaders of Renaissance Florence.-Birth and Early Career:...

. Some of Brossano's letters are published in the public letters of Coluccio Salutati.



Jacques-François-Paul-Aldonce de Sade in his book The Life of Petrarch says of Petrarch's closed casket funeral and reburial six years later by Francescuolo da Brossano in 1380, who built a raised sepulcher of red Verona marble with verses placed on top:

"The body of Petrarch dreffed in a flame-colored caffock, which was the habit of the canon of Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

, was carried by sixteen doctors on a bier, covered with a cloth of gold, lined with ermin to the parish church of Arqua
Arquà
Arquà may refer to two different communes in the Veneto region of north-eastern Italy:*Arquà Petrarca, in the province of Padua*Arquà Polesine, in the province of Rovigo...

, which was hung in a manner fuitable to this folemn ceremony. After the funeral oration, which was pronounced by Bonaventure de Peraga, of the order of the hermits of Saint Augustin; the body was interred in a chapel of the virgin, which Petrarch had built in this church. Some time after Francis da Brossano, having raised a marble tomb on four columns opposite the famed church, had his body removed thither, and engraved three Latin verses to his memory, the rhime is their only merit.
Frigida Francisci tegit hic lapis ossa Petrarcae.
Suscipe, Virgo parens, animam: sate Virgine, parce,
Fessaque jam terris, coeli requiescat in arce."


An article in The New Century Italian Renaissance Encyclopedia says:

"Petrarch's love for Laura, deep, real, and lasting as it was did not prevent him from becoming the father of two children by a woman whose name is unknown. A son, Giovanni was born in 1337 and a daughter Francesca in 1343. He had both legitimized by papal bull and did what he thought best for them." In 1368, with his daughter and Francescuolo da Brossano they moved to a house in Arqua, a village in the Euganean Hills near Padua."


That Francescuolo came from Milan is given by Thomas Campbell
Thomas Campbell
Thomas Campbell was a Scottish poet chiefly remembered for his sentimental poetry dealing specially with human affairs. He was also one of the initiators of a plan to found what became the University of London. In 1799, he wrote 'The Pleasures of Hope' a traditional 18th century survey in heroic...

 in an 1879 English translation of the life of Petrarch:
In the same year, 1361, Petrarch married his daughter Francesca, now near the age of twenty, to Francescuolo di Brossano, a gentleman of Milan.


Theodor Ernst Mommsen notes in his translation of Petrarch's testamentum saying in respect to Francescuolo being a native of Milan:
Francesco, or as he was more commonly called Francescuolo, was a native of Milan who held administrative positions first in the service of the Visconti
House of Visconti
Visconti is the family name of two important Italian noble dynasties of the Middle Ages. There are two distinct Visconti families: The first one in the Republic of Pisa in the mid twelfth century who achieved prominence first in Pisa, then in Sardinia where they became rulers of Gallura...

, later in the service of Carrara. In or about the year 1361 he married Petrarch's daughter Francesca, by whom he had a number of children.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK