Francesco Petrarch

Italian scholar, poet, and philosopher Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) is considered the first person to effectively close the door on the Middle Ages and open a new one onto the Renaissance. He is often described as the first Renaissance Man, not only because he was the master of many disciplines, but because he rejected the rigid artistic and moral dogmatism of the Middle Ages. Instead, he proposed a Humanist philosophy, one centered around people's free will and unquenchable thirst for self-knowledge. He was not a philosopher in the traditional sense of creating a new model for seeing the world. He was more a moral philosopher in that he emphasized the art of living well and happily. Although he had little effect on the political or economic world, he had enormous influence in shaping the artistic and moral sensibilities that characterized the...