Renaissance

A bird flies overhead. You listen intently to the clattering sound of your footsteps and the increasingly louder annoyed mutterings of the soldiers hot on your tail. You brace yourself for the jump to come. Rolling and dodging your way…

We don’t know as much about history as we like to think we do sometimes. For example, almost our entire knowledge of the druids of ancient Britain comes from the writings of the Romans who quite thoroughly suppressed them. How much of what…

Carlo Gesualda was born in Venosa, part of the Kingdom of Naples in southern Italy in 1566. His father was the Prince of Venosa, having been granted that title in 1561 when he married Geronima Borromeo, niece of Pope Pius IV. Carlo was his…

Cristoforo Colombo, known to us as Christopher Columbus, was born in the city-state of Genoa in 1451. Genoa had been part of the Kingdom of Italy when the Holy Roman Empire held dominion over the territory, and had gained its…

The title of “history’s most infamous family” is a hotly contested one. The cannibalistic Beane clan, who lived in a cave in Scotland and killed and ate passing travellers,would be strong contenders. Except they have the slight disadvantage…

There were few women who had the chance to make their mark on the Italian art world, but Artemisia Gentileschi was definitely one of them. During her lifetime she was the first woman admitted to the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in…

Ridiculous. Amusing. Laughable. These are the first words that came to mind when I saw this image of the sea monster who resembled a monk from 1642. I assumed it to be a Renaissance fantasy imagined by a sailor who had one too many…

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, or Leonardo da Vinci as he is better known, or the blue Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle as he is even better known, or Leonardo DiCaprio as he is perhaps best but certainly most-incorrectly known, was good.…