The miniaturist and the “creature of royal blood”

The miniatures and written glosses are the work of the same author as we can gather from the dedicatory letter to a “creature of royal blood.” They had a didactic purpose and a performative value as a support to a group reading and discussion of the Rvf. The author of both the miniatures and marginal glosses is presumably Antonio Grifo, who was born in Venice in 1430 and died in 1510. Various scholars contributed in different ways to the identification of Grifo, including Paolo Moretti, Nicholas Mann and Giuseppe Frasso. Pietro Gibellini underlines the conjectural character of the identification and prefers to speak of a "Maestro Queriniano" or "Dilettante Queriniano," because in the dedicatory letter the author of the miniatures declares that he was not a miniaturist by profession (Gibellini 47). 

Antonio Grifo was a poet himself, author of a Canzoniere in which he laments to have been exiled from Venice. He names Venice, and himself as well, "biforme animal" (biform animal). He was probably banned from the city for being a sympathizer of the filo-Milanese Sanseverino family. In Milan Grifo became poet-courtier very much appreciated by the Ludovico il Moro’s and the Sforza’s court. In 1491 he was probably present to the wedding between Ludovico il Moro and Beatrice D’Este. Giordana Mariani Canova holds that Grifo dedicated the glosses and the vignettes with which he illustrated the editio princeps of Petrarch’s Rvf precisely to Beatrice d’Este   ("Antonio Grifo illustratore del Petrarca Queriniano"  164).