Frontispiece to Petrarch’s Virgil

Simone Martini illuminated this frontispiece for a manuscript of Virgil owned by Francesco Petrarch. At the top, the Roman poet reclines beneath trees, holding a book and a pen. Servius, the ancient commentator on Virgil, draws aside a transparent curtain to reveal him. The soldier at left evokes the Aeneid, while a farmer and a shepherd below allude to the Georgics and the Eclogues. The figures turn the opening page of the book into a visual interpretation of literature.

The miniature was probably painted around 1340, in Simone’s final years in Avignon. It is held in Milan’s Biblioteca Ambrosiana, manuscript A 79 inf., folio 1v. The illuminated composition measures approximately 29.5 by 20 centimeters and is painted on parchment. Latin verses supplied by Petrarch explain the allegory and explicitly name Simone Martini. This extraordinary page records a collaboration between a Sienese painter and a poet whose study of classical antiquity helped shape early humanism.