In the lyric poetry of the first half of the 16th century, the critic recognizes several parallel currents that converge in two great lines.

Traditional: which perpetuates the themes and forms coming from the medieval tradition. It gathers the traditional lyric (carols, little songs of love, romance texts, etc.) as much as the song book poetry of the 15th century in its loving and didactic moral side. It is bound to the use of short verses, specially the verse with eight syllabes.

Italianizing: more innovative, it introduces in Spain the poetic models of Petrarca-related inspiration which are effective in the Italy of the Renaissance. It reflects the development of the innovations of Juan Boscán and Garcilaso, according to the pattern of the Italian cultured lírica of their time. It is bound to the use of eleven syllabes, the sonnet and diverse strophes derived from the Petrarca-like song.

A rigid dichotomy between the two currents is inappropriate since both descend from the common source of the Provençal poetry. In the Spanish lyric a Petrarca-like climate already existed, coming from the troubadour background that the poets of the new style had gathered in Italy. The rise of the italianizing lyric has a key date: in 1526 Andrea Navagiero insists Juan Boscán to prove in Castilian language sonnets and other strophes used by the good poets of Italy. In Italy the enthusiasm about the Greco-Latin works affects the resurgence of the bucolic feeling as well, next to the pastoral stories of the Golden Age and other classic myths that could be used to communicate the feeling of love.

Garcilaso de la Vega (1501-1536) was courtesan and soldier of the time of the emperor. It is practically impossible to remake his external life without autobiographical details inspired in greater part by the Portuguese Isabel Freire, passing first through the jealousy of her wedding, and later through the pain of her death. The poetry of Garcilaso ties with three main names: Virgilio, Petrarca and Sannazaro (of Virgilio, he rescues the expression of the feeling; of Petrarca, the metric and the investigation in moods; and of Sannazaro, his artistic level). He stood out because of the expressive richness of his verses.

The poetic trajectory of Garcilaso is constituted by the experiences of a spirit shaken between contradictory impulses, sunk in the conformity or refugee in beauty dreams. But these states of the soul have encountered the molds of the literary tradition, which have acted on the sentimental content and the expression, intensifying or filtering them. Garcilaso begins to worry about the beauty of the outer world, of the feminine beauty, after the landscape. Elements of a new style are present, that impel him to idealize the love, displaying it as a stimulus of the spirituality.