Polifonie verbali in un madrigale araldico trilingue attribuito e attribuibile a Petrarca: «La fiera testa che d’uman si ciba»

La fiera testa che d’uman si ciba, a madrigal set by Bartolino da Padova and Nicolò del Preposto, is a cryptic hermetic text, an example of the most virtuosic and refined poetry from the trecento. The heraldic references to Bernabò Visconti’s personal emblem, combined with allusions to Dante’s Commedia, reflect anti-Viscontean leanings. Other specific intertextual references to poems from the Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, that emphasize a very Petrarchan literary technique, confirm the attribution to Petrarch found in the manuscript Parmense 1081. This attribution is made all the more plausible by the dedicatory name revealed by certain acrostics. The patron to which the acrostics refer is, in all likelihood, Lapo da Castiglionchio il Vecchio, an extremist proponent of the Florentine aristocracy as well as a friend and correspondent of Petrarch. It is possible that the madrigal dates from 1366, the year of Urban V’s return to Rome, a move that both Lapo and Petrarch strongly supported. Indeed, Lapo found himself in Avignon in the fall of 1366 as the head of a Florentine delegation sent to offer the Pope ten galleys, in hopes of convincing him to embark for Italy, only a few months before Petrarch’s celebrated petition (later to become part of the his Seniles). This contribution concludes with a proposed contextualization and dating of the madrigal La douce çere d’un fier animal, set by Bartolino da Padova, which mirrors La fiera testa’s allusions to Dante’s Commedia.