In Italian poetry of the sixteenth century the myth of the phoenix is a frequent image, offering the opportunity to participate in the dignity of a long tradition within ancient Greek and Latin literature, as well as in Romance, and especially Italian, poetry since its origins. At the same time, the obvious reference to this tradition serves to render evident not only continuity, but, in particular, difference, as shown by the well-known example of Petrarchism throughout the centuries and particularly in the Cinquecento. In this way, too, the myth of the phoenix as presented in the great number of poems does not only emphasize the reference to Antiquity or to Petrarch, nor does it merely repeat traditional meanings where the myth stands for the beloved or the lover, for poetry or the poet himself, for immortality in the Christian sense or as conferred by the ars longa, by the artist’s art. Rather, this apparently identical image expresses otherness of the author’s own writing and thinking and, above all, the otherness of a profoundly changed view of man in his world and in his times.