Acantilado reissues Rafael Argullol's classic essay on Quattrocento

Acantilado has reissued Rafael Argullol's 1982 essay "El Quattrocento. Arte y cultura del Renacimiento italiano," a dense but brief classic on Renaissance art history. The book, long out of print, returns to bookshops with 192 pages priced at 14 euros. Argullol argues that the Renaissance was not a sum of diverse impulses but an intentional articulation of principles with reformist aims, presenting the Quattrocento as the only historical moment with a solid cultural unity. The essay explores the symbolic body as the home of the "homus novus," harmony, the relationship between heaven and earth, the ideal versus the terrestrial, the advance toward the "non finito," and divergences between Mediterranean and Flemish spheres. It includes images and poems, and its style approaches the literary despite the dense subject matter. The book is structured in short chapters offering a multifaceted view of a complex era where knowledge, spirituality, and art cannot be understood autonomously.