Renaissance Timeline

The Renaissance, Europe's 'rebirth' after the Middle Ages, brought renewed attention to classical art, literature and learning. In fourteenth-century Italy, humanism took root, reviving classical studies and turning toward human life. Exiled from Florence, Dante wrote the Divine Comedy, whose poet travels through Hell, Purgatory and Paradise. He wrote in Italian, not Latin, shaping Italian literature, and his Tuscan dialect set its literary standard. Giotto broke with the flat manner of earlier painting, filling his figures with new realism and human feeling. In Padua he frescoed the chapel of Enrico Scrovegni, whose father, a notorious moneylender, had been mentioned by Dante.

Searching old libraries, Petrarch found lost classical manuscripts, including forgotten works by Cicero. Often called humanism's founder or father, he revived classical ideals while keeping his Christian faith. On 8 April 1341, he was crowned poet laureate at Rome. Genoese ships sailing from Kaffa brought the Black Death into Europe, probably by way of Sicily. In Boccaccio's Decameron, ten young people left plague-stricken Florence and told one hundred tales. After the plague, a shortage of workers drove wages up.

Boccaccio, now Petrarch's friend, moved from storytelling into humanist scholarship after the Decameron. Widowed, Venice-born Christine de Pizan took up writing to support her children and herself. Late in the century, two great early Renaissance artists were born in Florence: the architect Filippo Brunelleschi and the sculptor Donatello. There, Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici, Cosimo's father, founded the Medici bank, and the family's fortunes rose. Wealthy Florentines, the Medici above all, would fund Renaissance artists and buildings.

In c. 1405 Christine de Pizan wrote The Book of the City of Ladies, a work praising women. In Italy, Filippo Brunelleschi built the dome of Florence Cathedral without the wooden frame a vault normally needs while going up. Lorenzo Ghiberti worked from 1425 to 1452 on the east doors of the Florence Baptistery, later named the Gates of Paradise, and Jan van Eyck, a master of oil painting, finished the Ghent Altarpiece in 1432 and painted the Arnolfini Portrait. In 1434 Cosimo de' Medici returned from exile as Florence's leading citizen, and the Medici began ruling the city. For that family, Donatello made his famous bronze David.

Lorenzo Valla, a humanist, showed through his knowledge of Latin that the Donation of Constantine, a document behind papal power, was a forgery. In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg devised printing with movable type, his press running by c. 1450. He then printed a Bible of 42 lines to the page. On 29 May 1453 the Ottoman sultan Mehmed II seized Constantinople, and the Byzantine Empire came to an end. Its fall drove many Greek scholars to Italy, their classical texts strengthening humanist learning there.

In 1454 the Peace of Lodi ended fighting among several Italian states, Milan, Venice and Florence included. Lorenzo de' Medici patronized leading artists, Sandro Botticelli and Andrea del Verrocchio among them. On 26 April 1478, during Mass in Florence Cathedral, Pazzi plotters attacked the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano; Giuliano was killed, and Lorenzo got away. Once the plot had failed and the war after it ended, Lorenzo's power in Florence was greater than before. Leonardo da Vinci moved from Florence to Milan in c. 1482, to work for the ruler Ludovico Sforza. The young Michelangelo was received into Lorenzo's circle and studied the Medici collection's ancient sculpture.

For the Spanish crown, Columbus claimed the islands of his first Atlantic voyage. In 1494 Charles VIII of France invaded Italy, beginning the Italian Wars, fought mainly between France and Spain. The invasion toppled Medici rule in Florence, where the preacher Savonarola then took charge, aiming to make the city a republic. In Milan, Leonardo painted the Last Supper for the Dominicans of Santa Maria delle Grazie. Savonarola was condemned to death with two companions and hanged and burned in Florence.

Michelangelo's marble David was meant for Florence Cathedral's roof but stood elsewhere in the city. Around 1503 Leonardo began the Mona Lisa. In 1506 work started on a new St Peter's Basilica in Rome for Pope Julius II, with Bramante as architect. Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling from 1508 to 1512 for the same pope. Raphael frescoed Julius's Vatican apartments, most famously the School of Athens.

Machiavelli lost his government post after the Medici retook Florence, and The Prince followed in 1513. Erasmus issued his Greek New Testament, with notes of his own, in 1516. An indulgence sold to help fund the rebuilding of St Peter's Basilica drew Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses of 31 October 1517, later seen as the start of the Protestant Reformation. On 6 May 1527, soldiers of the emperor Charles V stormed and sacked Rome. The sack drove many artists and architects away, and they sought safety and new patrons elsewhere.

Castiglione's Book of the Courtier appeared in 1528 as a widely read manual of manners for courtly men and women. From 1536 to 1541 Michelangelo laboured over the vast Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel. In 1543 Copernicus published a theory that gave the Sun the central place, with Earth travelling around it among the other planets, and Vesalius brought out De humani corporis fabrica, a major study of human anatomy. Vasari followed in 1550 with Lives of the artists, an early history of art assembled from biographies. In 1555 Sofonisba Anguissola painted The Chess Game, a picture of her sisters at play.

Answering the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Church summoned the Council of Trent, in session from 1545 to 1563. Abuse within the Church was reformed by its decrees, Catholic doctrine was defined in opposition to Protestant teaching, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation took shape under its influence. Meanwhile Elizabeth I sat on the English throne from 1558 to 1603, an era remembered as the Elizabethan Age. On 3 April 1559 the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis brought the Italian Wars to a close, with Spain left holding the upper hand in Italy. Gerardus Mercator then published, in 1569, a world map whose novel projection made an unchanging compass heading appear as a straight line for sailors.

The Gregorian calendar came into force on 15 October 1582, dropping ten days. Shakespeare's company, the Lord Chamberlain's Men, opened London's Globe Theatre in 1599. Galileo's telescope revealed lunar mountains, Jupiter's moons, and phases of Venus that showed Venus circling the Sun. The discoveries helped pave the way for Copernicus's Sun-centred system to be accepted. The Baroque style grew from Church-sponsored religious art against the Protestants after the Council of Trent. William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616, remembered as one of history's greatest writers.