Celebrate poet born in Tolède in 1503, died in Nice on on October 14th, 1536. Resulting from an old woman and family of the North of Spain illustrates, her father was ambassador of the catholic kings in Rome; his/her mother was only daughter and heiress of Fernan Pérez de Guzman.

It was accepted early at the court, arrived quickly to a rank raised in the army and enjoys the whole confidence of Charles-Quint, while his older brother, Pedro of Vega, compromised in the movement communalist, had been obliged to expatriate itself. Garcilaso accompanied the emperor in all his forwardings it was distinguished with defense by Vienna against the Turks (1532) (the century of Soliman), with the head office of Tunis (1535), where it accepted two serious wounds, finally during the disastrous countryside of Provence where, wounded of a stone to the attack of a small castle extremely close to Frejus, defended by fifty peasants of the neighborhoods, it succumbed little of days afterwards. In spite of its so short and so adventurous life, it still found leisures for poetry; he says itself to have run the world “Tomando will ora the espada, will ora plucked it”.

Close friend of famous Boscan, the introducer of the Italian forms in poetic Spanish (1526) under the inspiration of the Venetian ambassador Andre Navagiero, it vigorously supported it in this attempt, exceeded it like poet, and with them two they made a true literary revolution whose results were fertile. Its poetries understand 37 sonnets, 5 canciones, 2 elegies, 1 epistle in white worms and 3 pastoral. The grace, the freshness of the feelings and a soft melancholy are the features characteristic of this genius, which one often proclaimed largest of all the Spanish poets.

Published for the first time with poetries of Boscan (1543), by the widow of this last, those of Garcilaso almost always accompany them in the posterior editions. They were separately published many times, in particular in Salamanque (1574), with notes of france Sanchez; in Seville (1580), with a too prolix comment of Herrera; in Madrid (1622), with a comment of little value by Tamayo de Vargas; in Madrid (1765), with notes of J. - NR. of Azara, edition the most considered and often reprinted. (G. Pawlowski).