The miniuatures and the glosses
The images recall the contemporary Venetian miniature characterized among other things by the open landscape (Mariani Canova, "Antonio Grifo illustratore del Petrarca Queriniano" 166). The Renaissance Venetian miniature is nurtured by Venetian humanism’s peculiar tendency to evade the pure mental abstractions typical of Florentine philosophical humanism to privilege instead a profound continuity between idea and real life (Mariani Canova, La miniatura veneta del Rinascimento, 103-104). The miniatures occupy a marginal but large portion of the page and tend to prevail on the discrete written glosses. This remains true even though it is not possible to determine with absolute certainty if the miniature were added to the margins before or after the written glosses.
Giuseppe Frasso (76) and Giovanna Zaganelli (“La storia del Petrarca e la favola del Grifo,” 94) believe that the writing of the glosses preceded the execution of the miniatures. On the other hand, Gibellini holds that the chronological anteriority of the images over the glosses and their predominant role in the reading of the book are related to the targeted audience, namely Beatrice d’Este and the women's entourage at the Ludovico il Moro’s court. They were interested in the illustrated love story more than in possible allegorical interpretation of the Rvf. This would explain the fact that the illustrations tend to disappear in the second part of the incunabulum that includes Petrarch’s Trionfi (51-52).
Other key elements of the illustrations that might be explained having in mind the targeted audience are the attention paid to Laura as central character of the love story and the accuracy in depicting her fashionable clothes. Laura dresses only clothes inspired by the Spaniard fashion that was predominant in Italian courts until the arrival of Charles VIII in 1494 that triggered the spread of French fashion. For this reason Mariani Canova suggests that Grifo created the miniatures between 1491 and 1494 (Mariani Canova, "Antonio Grifo illustratore del Petrarca Queriniano" 174). Giuseppe Frasso interprets the offensive note about Italians being remissive to foreign invasion as referring to events posterior to 1494, taking place in 1509, and suggests that Grifo might have continued the writing of the glosses after the completion of the miniatures (57).
