Renaissance: Did you mean...?

A painted panel, one of six which together make up the Miracle of the Desecrated Host by the Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello (1397-1475 CE). This panel, the first in the series, is a triumph of Renaissance perspective painting...

Gothic cathedrals are some of the most recognizable and magnificent architectural feats. With soaring towers and softly filtered light streaming through stained glass windows, everything about the Gothic cathedral is transportive and ethereal...

The sculpture group of Laocoön and His Sons, on display in the Vatican since its rediscovery in 1506, depicts the suffering of the Trojan prince and priest Laocoön (brother of Anchises) and his young sons Antiphantes and Thymbraeus and is...

The Code of Ur-Nammu (c. 2100-2050 BCE) is the oldest extant law code in the world. It was written by the Sumerian king Ur-Nammu (r. 2047-2030 BCE) or his son Shulgi of Ur (r. 2029-1982 BCE) centuries before the famous Code of Hammurabi was...

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) was an Italian poet, writer, and scholar. His most famous and influential work is the Decameron, completed by 1353, in which his ten characters present 100 tales of everyday life. The book covers all manner...

Leo Africanus (al-Hasan ibn Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Wazzan al-Fasi al-Granati, 1485-1554) was a diplomat, merchant traveller and scholar who famously voyaged from Timbuktu to the Niger River and wrote 'The Description of Africa' (La Descrittione...

Ganymede (pronounced GAH-nuh-meed) is a youth in Greek mythology who is abducted by Zeus because of his great beauty and brought to Mount Olympus to serve as cupbearer. The story first appears in Homer’s Iliad without any suggestion of a...

Marguerite de Navarre (l. 1492-1549) was a writer, philosopher, diplomat, and Queen of Navarre, sister of King Francois I (Francis I of France, r. 1515-1547), mother of Jeanne d’Albret (l. 1528-1572) and grandmother of Henry IV of France...

The painting Virtue Triumphant over Vice by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (c. 1431-1506 CE). Completed c. 1502 CE. (Louvre, Paris)

The loggia of the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence by the Italian Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446 CE). Built 1419 to 1424 CE.