The most penetrating synthesis of the life and work of Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374). Professor Rico delves into the dark spots that still persist in the biography of the great Italian poet.
Francesco Petrarca is one of the summits of Western culture. His intellectual legacy, immense in his time, was the origin of what we still understand today as Humanism. But, in addition to being a great philologist and tireless scholar of the classics, Petrarca was also a man passionate about the politics of his time, a devout Catholic in constant reflection on his own and others' virtue, an aspiring Christian philosopher - Plato, Seneca and Saint Augustine were his great teachers - and, how can we forget, a unique poet, whose mark on European literature lasted for centuries and still captivates and influences us today.

This book traces the vicissitudes and masks of this figure, his intellectual career and the paradoxes of his posterity based on four splendid and wise texts by Francisco Rico, a member of the Royal Spanish Academy since 1987 and the most distinguished Petrarchan of our time.