Petrarch was best known for Canzoniers,a book of lyrical songs Which made me a stranger in my own romance written in his Italian dialect.His other works include,beside And set me apart from the well-trodden ways; Africa,Metrical Epistles,On Contempt for the worldly life,on The gleaming golden curly hair,the rays Solitude,Ecologues and The Letters. Flashing from a smiling angel's glance Here are two poems to show how Petrarch ignored medieval Which moved the world in paradisal dance, courtly conventions and defined true emotions,one written before, Are grains of dust,insensibilities. and one,after Laura's death. And I live on,but in grief and self-contempt, It was the Morning Left here without the light I loved so much, It was the morning of that blessed day In a great tempest and with shrouds unkempt. Whereon the Sun in pity veiled his glare For the Lord's agony,that,unaware, No more love songs,then,I have done with such; I fell a captive,Lady,to the sway My old skill now runs thin at each attempt, And tears are heard within the harp I touch. Of your swift eyes;that seemed no time to stay The strokes of Love:I stepped into the snare 4.Renaissance Art Secure,with no suspicion:then and there A radical break with medieval methods of representing the I found my cue in man's most tragic play. visible world occurred in Italy during the second half of the 13th century.However,after the Black Death of 1348 there came a Love caught me naked in his shaft,his sheaf, marked decline.It was not until the second decade of the 15th The entrance for his ambush and surprise century that there was a decided break with the medieval pictorial Against the heart wide open through the eyes, tradition. The constant gate and fountain of my grief: The tradition of the Renaissance art has the following distinct How craven so to strike me stricken so, features: Yet from you fully armed conceal his bow! (1)Art broke away from the domination of the church.Artists who used to be craftsmen commissioned by the church to paint the The Eyes That Drew from Me design became a separate strata like writers and poets doing noble and The eyes that drew from me such fervent praise, creative work. The arms and hands and feet and countenance (2)Themes of paintings changed from purely celestial realm 134 135