Note 1. Fra Guittone D’Arezzo, who flourished about 1250 A.D., belonged to the religious and military order of Cavalieri di Santa Maria; and Rossetti, in his Dante and his Circle, observes that Guittone seems to have enjoyed a greater literary reputation than almost any writer of his day. He also points out that the sonnet by Guittone to “The Virgin” is somewhat remarkable from Petrarch’s having transplanted its last line into his Trionfi d’ Amore. Guittone wrote more than two hundred sonnets; and although Lodovico Vernaccia and Piero delle Vigne preceded him in the composition of this form of verse, yet the number of sonnets they have left us is so small, as compared with those by Guittone, that we are justified in considering him the first principal writer of the “Sonnet.” [back]
