ABSTRACT
Bom in Montevarchi, he is known today above all for his Storia di Firenze (a his tory of Florence in the period 1527-^38). Contemporaries appreciated his poetic and philosophical works; thus the court lady and author Tullia d'Aragona (1508-1556) made him the interlocutor in her Dialogo dell’infinita dell’amore (1547). Today his Petrarchan and neo-Platonic poetry wea ries through repetition of the same im ages; aggravated by a certain overproduc tion which led to his writing hundreds of sonnets. Varchi also wrote plays, such as La suocera (The Mother in Law, ca. 1557-60), literary commentaries, and works on the Italian language, such as Ercolano (ca. 1560-65).
