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His Friend Giovanni: it independent men of letters, Petrarch from an •]y age dedicated himself to the study of the ssics. Although his vernacular poetry is today re regarded and remembered than his Latin npositions, it was on the latter that his fame ted in his own lifetime. His friend Giovanni xaccio (1313-1375), shared Petrarch's pas-:ate desire for a deeper knowledge of the ancient world, and besides the famous Decameron (1353), wrote important works in Latin on ancient mythology and on the fate of heroes and princes. In the followers of Petrarch and Boccaccio we can see clearly developed the characteristic features of humanist thought.
The picture was painted on the same day that he received news of the death of his old friend Julio Gonzalez, a fellow sculptor who used to join him in many of his experiments in Boisgeloup. There are two ways in which suffering appears to be taken for granted in this painting: his grief over his friend's death and his despair of the times unite in a cheerless memento mori that could not have been formulated more desperately by any of the Christians of the Middle Ages.
Other churches of special significance include, in the eastern quarter, Santa Maria dei Miracoli, a masterpiece of the Lombardesque Renaissance style, built in 1481-1489; the Gothic church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, containing the burial vaults of the doges; and the 15th century church of San Zaccaria, with one of Giovanni Bellini's finest madonnas. In the northern quarter are Santi Apostoli and San Giobbe, a Renaissance structure with a Gothic bell tower. In the western quarter is Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, church of the Franciscans, begun in 1250 and rebuilt in Gothic style in the 14th-15th centuries; it contains some fine examples of Venetian painting. |
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