From Petrarch to Machiavelli: the birth of a political ancestry during Fascism

This contribution aims to examine the declensions of the connection between Petrarch and Machiavelli, in some studies carried out between the Twenties and Forties of the 20th Century. It is in fact a key critical season which brings such a relationship into sharp focus for defining the terms of Petrarch’s politicalness as well as for bringing into the light some modern sources of Machiavelli’s, indispensable for understanding his vision on history and classical models. In some of the readings of these years, beside a historical-philological address, another one is found, more exquisitely ideological in character, which, in the relationship between the two authors, aims to give value to the nationalistic component, and then a given perception of Italy and its role in history, also with a reference to the politics of the Fascist regime.