<previous Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was a writer and poet and a son of a merchant living in Florence around the same time as Giotto. He moved to the court of Naples where he wrote the "tale of Troilus and Cressida" who later will inspire Shakespeare and Chaucer.

He returned to Florence in 1340 where he described the ravage of Black Death that started in 1348. He wrote the Decameron around 1313-75. Thi book is a journey by seven women and three men escaping the plague in Florence and telling stories of love and romance which are variations of earlier stories. He represents the birth of humanism in Northern Italy.

Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), friend of Boccaccio, was born in Arezzo. His father was a friend of Dante Alighieri. His family moved to Avignon in the south of France. Petrarch went to study Law at the university in Montpellier and later in Bologna. Petrarch travelled widely from Italy to Rhineland (today part of Germany) and amassed a library of classical literature that included a number of Greek manuscripts (Plato). He brought back to life the culture of Antiquity and is remembered by his love poems for Laure where passion is transformed into metaphysical adoration once his loved one disappears (probably of the Black Death).
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