Abstract
This essay focuses on three lezioni (or groups of lezioni) on Petrarch delivered by Varchi before the Accademia degli Infiammati and the Accademia Fiorentina. It analyzes the relationship between Varchi’s exegesis of Petrarch’s Fragmenta as expressed in these texts and his lyric production as it presents itself in the editio princeps of his canzoniere, the Sonetti. Parte prima of 1555. The goal is to show how, in interpreting Petrarch from a neoplatonic and ficinian perspective, Varchi intends to state the ideological and philosophical superiority of his Sonetti over the Fragmenta as a new ideological model for the proper love conduct.