Scholarly narratives about sixteenth-century Italian lyric poetry usually refer to Pietro Bembo’s theoretical and poetical production as the crucial milestone in the establishment of Renaissance Petrarchism. While similar accounts remain reliable, in recent years scholars have shown that Petrarchism does not exhaust itself with the poetical model set by Bembo in the footsteps of Petrarch. Indeed, mid- to late sixteenth-century poets contribute to the development of eclectic trends that, in various ways, challenge the centrality of Petrarch as the inspirational model for Petrarchism. Among them, Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–79) stands out. The Sienese philosopher, primarily known as a prolific translator and commentator of Aristotle, and as the author of several philosophical and scientific treatises, was also a refined poet, as witnessed by his Cento sonetti, published in Rome in 1549. The book counts among the most interesting products of Petrarchism after Bembo, where the legacy of Petrarch combines with a renewed interest in the Latin classics, Horace in particular. While students of Renaissance poetry have stressed the importance of the Cento sonetti by focusing on specific aspects of the collection, it is the recent critical and annotated edition by Franco Tomasi that now provides modern readers with an insightful and exhaustive study of Piccolomini’s poetry.

The volume opens with a thorough introduction that offers a discussion of the Cento sonetti, illuminating not only the compositional history of the collection, but also its place within both Piccolomini’s production and the wider context of sixteenth-century Petrarchism. Tomasi starts by focusing on Piccolomini’s attempt to put together a sort of canzoniere, thus proposing an alternative to the prevailing preference that poets and readers were giving to multiauthored poetical anthologies in the 1540s. Whereas the structural elaboration of the Cento sonetti barely compares to the complexity of the prototype embodied by Petrarch’s Canzoniere (a model that, despite the wide fortune of Petrarch in the sixteenth century, was hardly imitated in structural terms), Piccolomini did conceive the book of poetry as something more than a collection of unrelated pieces. In his careful analysis, Tomasi highlights the primary components of the poet’s project: not only does Piccolomini place a number of sonnets in strategic positions, thus marking turning points in what can be described as a loose autobiographical narrative, but he also leads the reader through such a narrative by providing names of dedicatees for each poem as well as short introductory rubrics that briefly illustrate either the content or the occasion of each piece.

As suggested by the poet himself in the unusually long preface that opens the Cento sonetti (the significance of which within the Renaissance debates on poetry is convincingly stressed by Tomasi), the book is meant to be the living proof that Petrarchism is not only about love and beauty, but also about philosophy (moral, in particular), science, and spiritual concerns. Tomasi shows that Piccolomini’s reflection on poetry includes some of the most outspoken statements about the philosophical function of poetry. By openly declaring his passion for the Latin poet Horace (whose books of Odes—as Tomasi suggests—likely inspired some of Piccolomini’s choices in structural terms), the poet advocates for a variety of topics that is meant to mirror the all-encompassing nature of poetry. Indeed, the notion of variety is key to Piccolomini’s poetical inspiration even when meter is concerned. In fact, Tomasi’s study shows that Piccolomini attempts to reshape the form of the sonnet from within, working in particular on the variation of the metrical solutions made canonical by Petrarch.

The rich introductory essay is followed by Tomasi’s impeccable critical edition of the Cento sonetti. The text of each sonnet is provided with a remarkable set of annotations that illustrate content and context of the piece, including detailed references to Piccolomini’s poetical sources, both Latin and vernacular. Equally praiseworthy are the appendixes, which include the edition of twenty other poems by Piccolomini (“Rime estravaganti” [275–312]) and the biographical profiles of Piccolomini’s dedicatees (313–36; this section proves very useful to shed light on the poet’s relations with many figures who did play significant roles in the cultural and political life of mid-sixteenth-century Italy). The indexes, including “tavola metrica” and “incipitario,” make the volume—which, by the way, sets an exemplary model for modern editors of Renaissance poetry—very easy to navigate.