Laura’s Nobility and Greatness in Two Sixteenth-Century Florentine Speeches by Simone della Barba (1554) and Francesco de’ Vieri (1580)

Petrarch’s model, in XVIth century Italian society, couples with a new attention paid to a sort of Laura-paradigm. Not only madonna Laura assumes a biographical identity through commentaries and paratexts, but she exemplifies a system of behaviours, values, virtues, not only aimed at the female world. The paper analyzes her new role, pivoting on two quite different texts: the Nuova spositione del sonetto che comincia “In nobil sangue uita humile, e queta” ne la quale si dichiara qual sia stata la vera nobiltà di madonna Laura by Simone della Barba, a speech held at the “Accademia fiorentina” and published in 1554; and the Discorso della grandezza, et felice fortuna d'una gentilissima, & graziosiss. donna, qual fù m. Laura, by Francesco de’ Vieri jr. and published in 1580. The first one, recalling the frame of the mediaeval discussion on nobility (Dante, Bartolo, Cicero) typical of Florence, realizes a political-ethical system based on Rvf 215 and other quotations on Laura. The second one, through a net of multiple quotations from Canzoniere and their explanations, rewrites Laura’s “felice e gran pellegrinaggio” [happy and pilgrimage], from creation to after-life, and proposes it as a model.