Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374), known in English as Petrarch.

Petrarch was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. He rescued innumerable texts of classical authors such as Cicero and had them copied and preserved. As a result of his help in reviving the classics Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism" He provided models for English sonnet cycles of love poets such as Sidney and Shakespeare by his series of sonnets and lyrics devoted to his mistress Laura. Image courtesy of the Yorck Project, under Creative Commons Attribution-Share- Alike License (Wikipedia).