Born in Arezzo in 1304, Francesco Petrarca (or Petrarch) was an Italian scholar, poet and early humanist. Considered as one of the fathers of the Renaissance along with Dante Alighieri (who was another famous Tuscan -- he was born in Florence), Petrarca became well known after his first major work, an epic in Latin about the Roman general Scipio Africanus titled [I]Africa[/I]. In 1341, Petrarca became the first man since antiquity to be honored as the poet laureate in Rome.
Petrarca traveled all over Europe, serving as an ambassador and collecting ancient Latin manuscripts. He commissioned the first Latin translation of Homer and uncovered a collection of Cicero's letters that no one even knew existed and is credited with creating the concept of the Dark Ages.
Although Petrarca did not marry, he did father two children; a son, Giovanni, who was born in 1337 and a daughter, Francesca, who was born in 1343. He eventually settled in Padua around 1367 and died in Arquà in the Euganean Hills in 1374.
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