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Skull Found in Petrarch's Tomb Isn't His

Posted on: Thursday, 22 April 2004, 06:00 CDT

ROME - Experts hoping to reconstruct the features of Italian poet Petrarch by examining his bones have a problem: The skull in the 14th-century writer's tomb is not his.

Researchers discovered Thursday that a skull in the marble casket believed to hold Petrarch's remains probably belonged to a woman, according to project leader Vito Terribile Wiel Marin. He insisted, however, that the rest of the bones were Petrarch's.

Marin said tests showed the DNA of the skull was different from that of the other bones - and that therefore the head could not be that of the literary great. Marin says physical marks, including a leg injury suffered while riding from Florence to Rome in 1350, confirm the other bones were Petrarch's.

"Don't ask me where the real cranium is, because no one knows where it finished up or who took it," Marin said. "Think of all the craniums in the world - where would we look?"

"Our only hope now is to make an appeal in the hope that someone who is the descendant of the thief might return it anonymously," he said.

Petrarch was born in Tuscany in 1304 and is famed for the poems he dedicated to his mysterious love, Laura. He is considered second only to Dante in the pantheon of Italian writers.

He devoted much of his life to the study of ancient Greek and Roman scholars, attempting to reconcile their pagan world with the Christianity that dominated Medieval European thought.

For this he is widely seen as the founder of humanism, the study of classical civilization that paved the way for the Renaissance.

Marin's team suspected from the shape of the skull that it belonged to a woman, and DNA tests showed this to be 60-70 percent probable, said Marin, speaking by phone from his home in the Padua area.

The team has sent samples from the skull to the United States for carbon dating to determine when it was placed in the tomb.

Petrarch's tomb is in Arqua-Petrarca, the village in northeastern Italy where the poet died in 1374.

Celebrations are planned there and in nearby Padua for the 700th anniversary of the poet's birth in July, Marin said. They will include exhibitions on Petrarch's life and works, and a first performance of a musical piece set to the words of one of Petrarch's sonnets.

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