 The Renaissance ideals first spread from Florence to the neighbouring states of Tuscany such as Siena and Lucca.Tuscan architecture and painting soon became a model for all the city-states of northern and central Italy, as the Tuscan variety of Italian language came to predominate throughout the region, especially in literature.Accounts of Renaissance literature usually begin with Petrarch (best known for the elegantly polished vernacular sonnet sequence of "Il Canzoniere" and for the book collecting that he initiated) and his friend and contemporary Giovanni Boccaccio (author of The Decameron).