99 Fun Facts About Renaissance

Which sculptor's second set of gilded bronze doors for Florence's baptistery was later dubbed the 'Gates of Paradise'?

Lorenzo Ghiberti spent 27 years on the doors; Michelangelo is said to have judged them worthy to be the gates of Paradise, and the name stuck.

Which historical period immediately preceded the Renaissance?

The Middle Ages got their name from Renaissance scholars, who saw the thousand years between ancient Rome and their own day as a mere gap in the middle.

Which intellectual movement, centred on classical texts and civic virtue, drove the Italian Renaissance?

Humanism began as a hunt for lost books: Petrarch turned up a forgotten collection of Cicero's letters in Verona in 1345, and later scholars combed monastery libraries for more.

Which Renaissance technique draws receding parallels toward a single vanishing point to suggest depth on a flat surface?

Linear perspective was set down in Alberti's 1435 treatise On Painting; Masaccio had already used it in his Holy Trinity fresco, whose painted vault, an early admirer wrote, looks like a hole in the wall.

Which artist painted 'The School of Athens' in the Vatican's Stanza della Segnatura?

Raphael painted The School of Athens for Pope Julius II between 1509 and 1511, and slipped a self-portrait into the fresco, standing at the right edge beside Ptolemy.

Who is credited with inventing Europe's movable-type printing press around 1440?

Johannes Gutenberg lost his workshop just as his great Bible was being finished: his financier, Johann Fust, sued over the loans, won, and took over the press.

Which Florentine painted 'The Birth of Venus', with the goddess arriving ashore on a giant scallop shell?

Sandro Botticelli took Venus's modest pose from ancient statues of the goddess, and painted her on canvas, then a cheaper support than the usual wood panel.

Doric, Ionic and Corinthian, revived by Renaissance architects, are the three classical styles of which building feature?

Columns in a different order mark each storey of Rome's Colosseum, and Renaissance architects copied the idea: Alberti's Palazzo Rucellai in Florence stacks three orders up its façade.

Compared with the Italian Renaissance, the Northern Renaissance placed greater emphasis on what?

Realistic detail and everyday life impressed Italy too: when Hugo van der Goes's Portinari Altarpiece reached Florence in 1483, painters such as Ghirlandaio imitated its naturalistic shepherds.

Which texture, perfected by Josquin and Palestrina, defined Renaissance sacred music?

Polyphony weaves several independent vocal lines together; legend has it that Palestrina's Pope Marcellus Mass, with its clearly audible words, persuaded the Council of Trent not to ban it.

Which Leonardo da Vinci portrait was stolen from the Louvre in 1911 and stayed missing for more than two years?

Mona Lisa was taken by Vincenzo Peruggia, a workman who had helped build its glass case; police even questioned Pablo Picasso before Peruggia was caught in Italy in 1913.

Which English playwright, baptised the same year as Christopher Marlowe, succeeded him as the preeminent Elizabethan dramatist?

William Shakespeare was baptised the same year as Marlowe, whom scholars believe greatly influenced him before he took over as the leading Elizabethan playwright.

Which astronomer proposed the heliocentric model, placing the Sun at the universe's center?

Nicolaus Copernicus kept his theory in manuscript for decades until a young mathematician, Rheticus, arrived in 1539 and coaxed the book into print; it appeared in 1543, the year he died.

The Medici, the most famous patrons of the Renaissance, built their fortune in which business?

Banking made the Medici rich enough to dominate Florence without a throne: their bank, Europe's largest in the 15th century, also looked after the papacy's money.

Which city's fall to the Ottomans in 1453 sent Greek scholars west to Italy with ancient manuscripts?

Constantinople fell to the 21-year-old sultan Mehmed II after a 53-day siege in which giant cannon battered its ancient walls; refugee scholars then carried Greek learning to Italy.

Which Venetian printer commissioned the first italic type and published pocket-sized classics?

Aldus Manutius wanted the classics out of the library: his editions were small enough to carry about, which is why they are called forerunners of the paperback.

Which Niccolò Machiavelli treatise of 1513 advised rulers on gaining and keeping power by pragmatic, sometimes ruthless means?

The Prince was written months after the returning Medici had Machiavelli jailed and tortured, in the hope of winning back a post; it was printed only in 1532, five years after his death.

Whose bronze David, long displayed in the Medici palace courtyard, is regarded as the first freestanding nude male statue since antiquity?

Donatello's bronze David did not stay with the Medici: when Florence drove the family out in the 1490s, the city's government took the statue for the courtyard of its own palace.

Which architect engineered the vast brick dome of Florence Cathedral, completed in 1436?

Filippo Brunelleschi won the 1418 competition with a plan to do without the usual timber centring: a double shell laid ring by ring, so the dome held itself up as it rose.

Which scientist turned a telescope on Jupiter in 1610 and found four moons circling it?

Galileo Galilei named them the Medicean Stars to court the ruling family of Tuscany, and it worked: he was made the grand duke's chief mathematician and philosopher that same year.

Which Portuguese explorer was the first European to reach India by sea?

Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in May 1498, but the cloth, hats, sugar and honey he offered its ruler were poor gifts by local standards and failed to impress.

Marsilio Ficino, backed by the Medici, made the first complete Latin translation of which Greek philosopher?

Plato was a Medici project: the family's head gave Ficino Greek manuscripts and a small farm near his own villa at Careggi so that he could translate undisturbed. The Latin Plato was printed in 1484.

Which scene on Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel ceiling shows God reaching out to touch a reclining figure's fingertip?

The Creation of Adam was painted by an artist who thought of himself as a sculptor, not a painter: Michelangelo took on the ceiling reluctantly and spent four years on it, working standing up.

Which English author wrote 'Utopia', describing an ideal island society?

Thomas More built the title from Greek words meaning 'no place'; in 1535 Henry VIII had him executed for refusing to accept the king as head of the English Church.

Which monarchs funded Christopher Columbus's first Atlantic voyage in 1492?

Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain said yes only after Portugal's John II had twice sent Columbus away and their own experts had judged, rightly, that he had the distance to Asia far too short.

Which scholar wrote the satirical Latin oration In Praise of Folly in 1509 while staying with a friend in England?

Erasmus claimed he wrote it in about a week. It became his most famous book and is still in print, although the Church later put his works on its Index of forbidden books.

Leonardo da Vinci wrote most of his private notes in which unusual way?

Mirror writing ran from right to left across his notebooks. It looks like a secret code, but he was left-handed and it was most likely just the easier way to write.

Which Northern Renaissance artist painted the 'Arnolfini Portrait' of 1434?

Jan van Eyck signed it where nobody could miss it: the flamboyant Latin written on the back wall of the room reads 'Jan van Eyck was here 1434'.

With which figure's actions is the Protestant Reformation considered to have begun?

Martin Luther wrote his Ninety-five Theses against the sale of indulgences in 1517. Whether he really nailed them to a church door is doubted, but printers soon spread them across Germany.

Which Medici, grandfather of Lorenzo the Magnificent, began the family's rule of Florence in 1434?

Cosimo de' Medici returned from exile in 1434 and ran Florence from behind the scenes for thirty years; after his death in 1464 the city named him Pater Patriae.

Which technique uses strong contrasts of light and shadow to model volume and heighten drama?

Chiaroscuro is Italian for light-dark. Caravaggio later pushed it to an extreme, sinking his backgrounds into darkness so that his figures look caught in a spotlight.

Which Florentine sculptor, teacher of the young Leonardo da Vinci, designed Venice's bronze horseman monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni?

Andrea del Verrocchio got the job after Colleoni left Venice a fortune in return for a statue in Piazza San Marco; the city, which allowed no monuments there, put it beside the Scuola di San Marco instead.

What does the word 'Renaissance' literally mean?

Rebirth is the literal sense of the French word, which became the period's name some three centuries on, after the historian Jules Michelet used it in his 1855 History of France.

Michelangelo's 17-foot David, unveiled in Florence in 1504, is carved from which stone?

Marble from Carrara: Michelangelo took over a giant block that another sculptor had begun and given up on some forty years earlier, and carved David from it between 1501 and 1504.

Which German artist painted a 1500 self-portrait posed frontally like an icon of Christ?

Albrecht Dürer's Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight, dated 1500, shows him full-face in a fur-trimmed coat, a frontal pose previously reserved for images of Christ.

Leonardo da Vinci's mural of The Last Supper covers an end wall of a convent refectory in which city?

Milan's ruler, Ludovico Sforza, ordered it. Leonardo painted The Last Supper on dry plaster instead of true fresco so that he could rework it, and the paint was already flaking before he died.

Which painter-architect wrote Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, often called the first art history?

Giorgio Vasari published the Lives in 1550 and enlarged it in 1568, but he is no safe witness: he accused Andrea del Castagno of murdering a fellow painter who in fact outlived him.

Which physician published the landmark anatomy book De humani corporis fabrica in 1543?

Andreas Vesalius dissected human bodies himself, executed criminals among them, and showed that Galen, medicine's authority since Roman times, had based much of his anatomy on animals.

Which French king brought Italian artists home to Amboise after his 1494–95 invasion of Italy?

Charles VIII returned from his 1494–95 Naples campaign with Italian artists and craftsmen for Amboise; Francis I later brought Leonardo and Cellini north and built Chambord.

Which Dominican friar staged Florence's 1497 'bonfire of the vanities', burning cosmetics, books and art?

Girolamo Savonarola lit it on Shrove Tuesday, the last day of Carnival. Within months the pope had excommunicated him, and in 1498 he was hanged and burned in the same square.

Which Bosch triptych fills its central panel with nude revellers, giant fruit and strange birds?

The Garden of Earthly Delights was bought in 1591 by Philip II of Spain, an avid collector of Bosch; it hung in his Escorial palace for more than three centuries before moving to the Prado.

In which 1478 plot was Lorenzo de' Medici wounded and his brother Giuliano stabbed to death during Mass in Florence Cathedral?

The Pazzi conspiracy failed when Lorenzo escaped into the sacristy; within hours the plotters, the archbishop of Pisa among them, were hanging from the windows of the Palazzo della Signoria.

Which Venetian master painted the huge Assumption of the Virgin altarpiece unveiled in the Frari basilica in 1518?

Titian painted the figures well over life-size so they would carry across the vast church. The altarpiece, the largest in Venice, spent a century in a museum before returning to its altar in 1919.

Which Leonardo da Vinci work has appeared on Italy's one-euro coin since 2002?

Vitruvian Man fits a body inside both a circle and a square. The original, kept in Venice, is on paper, fragile and sensitive to light, so it is only rarely put on show.

Cremona-born Sofonisba Anguissola became official court painter to which king?

As a young woman she met Michelangelo in Rome, who recognised her talent at once. She lived to about 97 and was visited by Van Dyck in her old age.

Which sculpture in St Peter's Basilica is the only work Michelangelo signed, reportedly after hearing it credited to another artist?

Pietà carries his name on the sash across Mary's chest, cut, the story goes, after he heard it credited to a rival; it has stood behind bulletproof glass since a 1972 hammer attack.

Pico della Mirandola's best-known speech, written in 1486, is known as the Oration on the Dignity of what?

Man comes from a title given after Pico's death: he never named the speech, which he wrote to open a public defence of his 900 theses in Rome. The pope blocked the debate before it could begin.

Petrarch, a 14th-century poet who idolised ancient Rome, is credited with originating which idea of history?

The Dark Ages began as Petrarch's image of his own times: he set the darkness of the centuries since Rome's fall against the light of the ancient world.

Which architect's villas in the Veneto, now a UNESCO site, inspired Thomas Jefferson's Monticello?

Andrea Palladio began as a stonemason named Andrea di Pietro; his patron, the scholar Trissino, renamed him after Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom, and took him to Rome to study its ruins.

Before oil paint took over, Renaissance panel painters bound their tempera pigments with which kitchen ingredient?

Egg yolk makes tempera dry rapidly, so painters traditionally built up their colours with numerous small brush strokes laid down in a cross-hatching technique.

Which English king, once titled Defender of the Faith by the pope, later made himself head of his own national church?

Henry VIII won the title in 1521 for a book defending the pope's supremacy, and after Rome revoked it Parliament simply conferred it on him again.

Which Italian explorer's first name was Latinised on Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map to label the New World?

Amerigo Vespucci claimed Brazil belonged to a fourth continent unknown to Europeans, and the German mapmaker honoured him by printing the name America on his map.

Which Uffizi painting shows a goddess standing in a giant scallop shell as winds blow her towards the shore?

The Birth of Venus was painted on canvas, at the time a cheaper support than the wooden panel used for Primavera, the same painter's other great mythological scene.

Which family of Spanish origin produced Pope Alexander VI and his notorious children Cesare and Lucrezia?

Borgia is the Italian form of Borja, the Spanish town the family was named after, and under their second pope they were suspected of bribery, theft and murder.

Which calendar, introduced by papal decree in 1582, jumped straight from Thursday 4 October to Friday 15 October?

The Gregorian calendar deleted 10 days to cancel the drift built up since the Council of Nicaea, pulling the spring equinox back to 21 March.

Which Miguel de Cervantes book, often called the first modern novel, has its hero attack windmills he takes for giants?

Don Quixote was popular enough to draw a fake sequel, published under a pen name in 1614, a year before the author's own second part appeared.

Which French apothecary and astrologer published Les Prophéties in 1555, a book of 942 four-line verse predictions?

Nostradamus went to the University of Montpellier to study medicine but was soon expelled when it learned he had been an apothecary, a manual trade its statutes banned.

Which poet's Divine Comedy, written in his native Tuscan dialect rather than Latin, helped shape modern Italian?

Dante Alighieri wrote it in exile, banished from his home city for life and told he could be burned at the stake if he ever came back.

Which papal corps, still seen in striped Renaissance-style uniform, lost 147 men defending Pope Clement VII in 1527?

The Swiss Guard bought time for the pope to escape along a fortified passage during the Sack of Rome, and new guards are traditionally sworn in on its anniversary, 6 May.

Which 1517 list of debating points against the sale of indulgences was reputedly posted on a Wittenberg church door?

The Ninety-five Theses were written in Latin to propose an academic debate, yet several hundred copies had been printed across Germany before the year was out.

Which English queen, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, gave her name to the age of Marlowe, Drake and the Armada's defeat?

Elizabeth I was locked in the Tower of London during her half-sister Mary's reign on suspicion of backing Protestant rebels, four years before taking the throne.

Which Portuguese captain was killed in the Philippines before his crew finished the first voyage around the world?

Ferdinand Magellan fell in a skirmish on the island of Mactan, and the Spaniard Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the last ship home to Spain in 1522.

Which Boccaccio book has a group of young people trade 100 tales in a country villa while hiding from the plague?

The Decameron was among the titles on the Church's original Index of prohibited books in 1559, some two centuries after it was written.

Which Christopher Marlowe tragedy follows a Wittenberg scholar who signs away his soul in blood for 24 years of power?

Doctor Faustus gained a spooky reputation of its own: a 1632 polemic against the theatre records the tale that real devils once appeared on stage during a performance.

Which plucked instrument, a relative of the Near-Eastern oud, led secular music-making in the Renaissance?

Lute players had seven sizes to choose from by the end of the Renaissance, from small trebles right down to a great octave bass.

Which title belonged to the Venetian Republic's head of state, elected for life until Napoleon ended the office?

Doge was an office with an odd ceremonial duty attached: its holder celebrated the symbolic marriage of the city to the sea.

Which animal appears plated like a suit of armour in a famous Renaissance woodcut whose German artist never saw one?

The rhinoceros was drawn from a written description and a brief sketch of one shipped to Lisbon, the first seen alive in Europe since ancient times.

Which Danish astronomer lost part of his nose in a sword duel and later ran the island observatory Uraniborg?

Tycho Brahe wore a prosthetic nose for the rest of his life, and chemical tests on his exhumed remains in 2012 showed it was made of brass.

Which Sistine Chapel fresco had draperies painted over its nudes by an artist then nicknamed the breeches maker?

The Last Judgment was first covered up by Daniele da Volterra, an admirer of the original painter who kept his changes to a minimum, and later campaigns added more drapery.

Which French-born reformer, trained as a lawyer, wrote the Institutes of the Christian Religion and reshaped Geneva?

John Calvin only meant to spend a single night in Geneva, on a detour around troop movements, but a fellow French reformer begged him to stay and help.

Which pope, nicknamed the Warrior Pope, personally led armies and laid the foundation stone of the new St Peter's?

Julius II is usually pictured with a beard, though he wore one for less than a year, grown in mourning after the Papal States lost the city of Bologna.

Which Holy Roman Emperor, whose troops sacked Rome in 1527, later gave up his thrones for a Spanish monastery?

Charles V ruled the first realm to be called the empire on which the sun never sets, yet spent his last years in a secluded monastery with clocks lining every wall.

Which king acquired the Mona Lisa for France and in 1539 made French, not Latin, the language of government?

Francis I was hailed as the Father and Restorer of Letters, and his favourite home became the palace he rebuilt and expanded at Fontainebleau.

Which blue stone from Afghanistan was ground into ultramarine, a pigment at times valued as highly as gold?

Lapis lazuli gave ultramarine its name, Latin for 'beyond the sea', since Italian traders shipped it in from distant mines, and painters saved it for the Virgin Mary's robes.

Which Dominican friar, who proposed that stars were distant suns with planets of their own, was burned in Rome in 1600?

Giordano Bruno went to the stake in the Campo de' Fiori market square, where a monument to him was unveiled in 1889 despite sharp opposition from the clerical party.

Which Flemish painter of The Hunters in the Snow made peasant weddings and village life his signature subject?

Pieter Bruegel painted winter scenes in 1565 that are now treated as evidence of just how severe the Little Ice Age was.

In which Spanish city did the Cretan-born painter El Greco settle for life and paint a famous view of its skyline?

Toledo was home to El Greco from 1577 until his death, and though the name was only a nickname he went on signing his canvases with his birth name in Greek letters.

Which Loire Valley château, built as a royal hunting lodge, has a double-spiral staircase whose two flights never meet?

Chambord has 440 rooms, yet the king who built it spent barely seven weeks there in total, all of them on short hunting visits.

Which French nobleman withdrew to his château tower in 1571 and popularised the essay as a literary form?

Michel de Montaigne was raised to speak Latin as his first language, his father hiring only servants who could talk to the boy in it.

Which gathering of bishops, meeting on and off from 1545 to 1563, set out the Catholic answer to Protestantism?

The Council of Trent sat in three separate periods under three different popes, and was the last such council to be organised outside the city of Rome.

Which Basque soldier, his leg shattered by a cannonball at Pamplona in 1521, went on to found the Jesuits?

Ignatius of Loyola asked for romances of chivalry to pass his convalescence, but the castle held only lives of Christ and the saints, and reading them changed his course.

What name was given to the French Protestants killed in their thousands in the St Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572?

Huguenots made up as much as 10% of the French population on the eve of the massacre, and the label itself began as a term of derision whose origins are unclear.

Which Flemish mapmaker's 1569 world map let sailors plot a course of constant compass bearing as a straight line?

Gerardus Mercator was also the first to use the word atlas in connection with maps, and as a younger man spent months in prison accused of heresy.

Which small, fast ship, often rigged with lateen sails, carried Portuguese explorers down the coast of Africa?

Caravel design grew out of the fishing craft of Portugal, Galicia and Andalusia, and the ship was noted for sailing into the wind at remarkable speed.

Which German-born painter stretched a distorted skull across the foreground of his 1533 double portrait The Ambassadors?

Hans Holbein became King's Painter in England, where his portrait of Anne of Cleves helped bring about the downfall of Cromwell, the minister behind the royal match.

Which painter's lifelike frescoes in Padua's Scrovegni Chapel, finished around 1305, broke with the Byzantine style?

Giotto was said by an early biographer to have been a shepherd boy, discovered by an older master while drawing pictures of his sheep on a rock.

Which Marchioness of Mantua, a leading art patron and trendsetter in fashion, was hailed as the First Lady of the world?

Isabella d'Este left copies of some 12,000 letters she wrote, and governed Mantua as regent both while her husband was away and later for her young son.

Which verse form, invented at a Sicilian court and made famous by Petrarch, was pioneered in English by Thomas Wyatt?

Sonnet writing began with Giacomo da Lentini at the Palermo court of Frederick II, and some of Wyatt's own poems were straight translations of Petrarch.

Which English Bible was completed in 1611 by 47 scholars working in six committees?

The King James Version was the third English translation approved by the Church of England, set in motion after Puritans aired their grievances at Hampton Court in 1604.

Which diplomat wrote The Book of the Courtier, a guide to graceful nonchalance set among the nobles of Urbino?

Baldassare Castiglione worked on it for twenty years and saw it printed only just before his death, after which it quickly became an enormously popular manual of manners.

Which document, long used to back papal claims to political power, did Lorenzo Valla expose as a forgery around 1440?

The Donation of Constantine was written in Latin that could not date from the 4th century, Valla argued, and it was probably composed some four hundred years later.

Which Flemish masterpiece of 1432, installed in Saint Bavo Cathedral, has been the victim of 13 crimes and seven thefts?

The Ghent Altarpiece had its Just Judges panel stolen in 1934, after which the Belgian restorer Jef Van der Veken painted a copy of it.

Which painter, dead at twenty-six, left Brancacci Chapel frescoes that generations of later artists came to study?

Masaccio is a nickname, a joking form of Tommaso meaning clumsy or messy Tom, perhaps coined to tell him apart from a collaborator who shared his first name.

Which goldsmith, whose autobiography calmly recounts his own killings, made a golden salt cellar for the King of France?

Benvenuto Cellini's salt cellar was stolen from a Vienna museum in 2003 and found nearly three years later, buried in a lead box in an Austrian forest.

Which Augsburg banking family, led by Jakob 'the Rich', financed Habsburg emperors and dominated Europe's copper trade?

Fugger money also built the Fuggerei, the world's oldest social housing complex still in use, which its founder reserved for needy Catholic citizens of Augsburg.

Which 1494 agreement split newly found lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along an Atlantic line?

The Treaty of Tordesillas pushed an earlier papal line further west, which is how Portugal came to hold the eastern bulge of what is now Brazil.

Which translator's English New Testament, printed abroad in 1526, was smuggled home between the pages of other books?

William Tyndale was the first to translate English Scripture directly from Hebrew and Greek, and was strangled at the stake for heresy near Brussels.

Which Portuguese royal, never king himself, sent ships down Africa's coast and won his famous nickname centuries later?

Henry the Navigator was not called that in his lifetime or for three centuries afterwards, and his fabled school for sailors at Sagres is now regarded as a legend.

Which 1571 sea battle, the last major fight between fleets of oared galleys, saw a Holy League crush the Ottoman navy?

Lepanto involved more than 450 warships, the largest naval battle in the West since antiquity, and among those fighting was Miguel de Cervantes.