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Orcagna was a student of Andrea Pisano as well as Giotto di Bondone, his younger brothers Jacopo di Cione and Nardo di Cione were also artists. The di Cione brothers often worked collaboratively.
Lodovico de Medici also known as Giovanni dalle Bande Nere (5 April 1498 – 30 November 1526) was an Italian <i>condottiero</i>. He was the son of Giovanni de Medici and Caterina Sforza. He was the father of Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany.<br/><br/><i>Condottieri</i> (singular <i>condottiero</i> and <i>condottiere</i>) were the leaders of the professional military free companies (or mercenaries) contracted by the Italian city-states and the Papacy from the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance.
Francesco Ferruccio (or Ferrucci) (1489 – August 3, 1530) was an Italian captain from Florence who fought in the Italian Wars.
Piero Capponi (1447 – September 25, 1496) was an Italian statesman and warrior from Florence.<br/><br/> He was at first intended for a business career, but Lorenzo de' Medici, appreciating his ability, sent him as ambassador to various courts, where he acquitted himself with distinction.<br/><br/> On the death of Lorenzo (1492), who was succeeded by his son, the weak and incapable Piero, Capponi became one of the leaders of the anti-Medicean faction which two years later succeeded in expelling Piero de' Medici from Florence. Capponi was then made chief of the republic and conducted public affairs with great skill, notably in the difficult negotiations with Charles VIII of France, who had invaded Italy in 1494 and in whose camp the exiled Medici had taken refuge.
Farinata degli Uberti (Florence, 1212 – Florence, November 11, 1264), real name Manente degli Uberti, was an Italian aristocrat and military leader, considered by some of his contemporaries to be a heretic. He is remembered mostly for his appearance in Dante Alighieri's Inferno and is mentioned in C.S. Lewis's short 'sequel to <i>The Screwtape Letters</i>, <i>Screwtape Proposes a Toast</i>.
Benvenuto Cellini (3 November 1500 – 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, draftsman, soldier, musician, and artist who also wrote a famous autobiography and poetry.<br/><br/> He was one of the most important artists of Mannerism.
Guido of Arezzo (also Guido Aretinus, Guido Aretino, Guido da Arezzo, Guido Monaco, or Guido d'Arezzo, or Guy of Arezzo also Guy d'Arezzo) (991/992 – after 1033) was an Italian music theorist of the Medieval era. He is regarded as the inventor of modern musical notation (staff notation) that replaced neumatic notation; his text, the <i>Micrologus</i>, was the second-most-widely distributed treatise on music in the Middle Ages (after the writings of Boethius).
Mariangelo Accorso (Latin: Mariangelo Accursio or Mariangelus Accursius; 1489 or 1490 – 1544 or 1546) was an Italian writer and critic. He was born at L'Aquila (Abruzzo), then part of the kingdom of Naples.<br/><br/> Accorso was a great favourite with Charles V, at whose court he resided for thirty-three years, and by whom he was employed on various foreign missions. To a perfect knowledge of Greek and Latin he added an intimate acquaintance with several modern languages.<br/><br/> In discovering and collating ancient manuscripts, for which his travels abroad gave him special opportunities, he displayed uncommon diligence. His work entitled <i>Diatribae in Ausonium, Solinum et Ovidium</i> (1524) is a monument of erudition and critical skill.
Saint Antoninus of Florence (1389 - 1459), was an Italian Dominican friar, who ruled as an Archbishop of Florence. He is venerated as a saint by the Catholic Church.
Andrea Cesalpino (6 June 1519 – 23 February 1603) was an Italian physician, philosopher and botanist.<br/><br/> In his works he classified plants according to their fruits and seeds, rather than alphabetically or by medicinal properties. In 1555, he succeeded Luca Ghini as director of the botanical garden in Pisa. The botanist Pietro Castelli was one of his students.<br/><br/> Cesalpino also did limited work in the field of physiology. He theorized a circulation of the blood. However, he envisioned a 'chemical circulation' consisting of repeated evaporation and condensation of blood, rather than the concept of 'physical circulation' popularized by the writings of William Harvey (1578–1657).
Paolo Mascagni (January 25, 1755 – October 19, 1815) was an Italian physician, known for his study of human anatomy, in particular for the first complete description of the lymphatic system.
Francesco Redi (18 February 1626 – 1 March 1697) was an Italian physician, naturalist, biologist and poet. He is referred to as the 'founder of experimental biology', and as the 'father of modern parasitology'. He was the first person to challenge the theory of spontaneous generation by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies.
Galileo Galilei (15 Feb. 1564—8 Jan. 1642) was an Italian physicist, mathematician, philosopher and astronomer who played a pivotal role in establishing modern science at a time when contradiction of religion was considered heresy. It was as an astronomer that he was most controversial. Galileo developed telescopes that confirmed the phases of Venus, and the discovery of the four largest satellites of Jupiter (named the Galilean moons in his honour), as well as sunspots.<br/><br/> In 1610, while a majority of philosophers and astronomers still subscribed to the geocentric opinion that the Earth was the centre of the universe, Galileo came out in support of Copernicus' heliocentric view that the Sun was at the center of the solar system.<br/><br/> Galileo's opinions were met with outrage and bitter opposition, and he was denounced to the Roman Inquisition. In February 1616, although he had been cleared of any offence, the Catholic Church nevertheless condemned heliocentrism as 'false and contrary to [Christian] Scripture' and forced Galileo to renounce his scientific conclusions.<br/><br/> However, in 1632, Galileo published 'Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems', in which he again defended heliocentrism. He was tried by the Inquisition, found 'vehemently suspect of heresy', forced to recant, and spent the rest of his life under house arrest.
Pier Antonio Micheli (December 11, 1679 – January 1, 1737) was a noted Italian botanist, professor of botany in Pisa, curator of the Orto Botanico di Firenze, author of <i>Nova plantarum genera iuxta Tournefortii methodum disposita</i>. He discovered the spores of mushrooms, was a leading authority on cryptogams, and coined several important genera of microfungi.
Francesco Guicciardini (6 March 1483 – 22 May 1540) was an Italian historian and statesman. A friend and critic of Niccolò Machiavelli, he is considered one of the major political writers of the Italian Renaissance. In his masterpiece, <i>The History of Italy</i>, Guicciardini paved the way for a new style in historiography with his use of government sources to support arguments and the realistic analysis of the people and events of his time.
Amerigo Vespucci (9 March 1454 - 22 February 1512) was an Italian explorer, navigator and cartographer, born and brought up by his uncle in the Republic of Florence, in what is now Italy. Vespucci worked for Lorenzo de Medici and his son, Giovanni. In 1492, he was sent to work at the Seville branch of the Medici bank.<br/><br/> At the invitation of King Manuel I of Portugal, Vespucci participated as an observer in several voyages that explored the east coast of South America between 1499 and 1502. Manuel's commander Pedro Alvares Cabral, on his way to the Cape of Good Hope and India in 1500, had discovered Brazil at latitude 16°52'S. Portugal claimed this land by the Treaty of Tordesillas, and the king wished to know whether it was merely an island or part of the continent that Spanish explorers had encountered further north.<br/><br/> Vespucci, having already been to the Brazilian shoulder, seemed the person best qualified to go as an observer with the new expedition. Vespucci did not command at the start; in fact, he had no experience in piloting a ship. The Portuguese captain was Gonçalo Coelho, but Vespucci took charge at the request of the Portuguese officers. On the first of these voyages, he was aboard the ship that discovered that South America extended much further south than previously thought.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was a Florentine historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist, and writer during the Renaissance. He was for many years an official in the Florentine Republic, with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs.<br/><br/> Macchiavelli was a founder of modern political science, and more specifically political ethics. He also wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is renowned in the Italian language. He was Secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power.<br/><br/> He wrote his masterpiece, The Prince, after the Medici had recovered power and he no longer held a position of responsibility in Florence. His views on the importance of a strong ruler who was not afraid to be harsh with his subjects and enemies were most likely influenced by the Italian city-states, which due to a lack of unification were very vulnerable to other unified nation-states, such as France.
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 – 21 December 1375) was an Italian writer, poet, correspondent of Petrarch, and an important Renaissance humanist. Boccaccio wrote a number of notable works, including <i>The Decameron</i> and <i>On Famous Women</i>. He wrote his imaginative literature mostly in the Italian vernacular, as well as other works in Latin, and is particularly noted for his realistic dialogue which differed from that of his contemporaries, medieval writers who usually followed formulaic models for character and plot.
Francesco Petrarca (July 20, 1304 – July 19, 1374), commonly anglicized as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar and poet in Renaissance Italy, and one of the earliest humanists.<br/><br/> Petrarch's rediscovery of Cicero's letters is often credited for initiating the 14th-century Renaissance. Petrarch is often considered the founder of Humanism.
Durante degli Alighieri, simply called Dante (c. 1265 – 1321), was a major Italian poet of the Late Middle Ages. His <i>Divine Comedy</i>, originally called <i>Comedìa</i> and later christened <i>Divina</i> by Boccaccio, is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564), commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.<br/><br/> Considered the greatest living artist in his lifetime, he has since been held as one of the greatest artists of all time. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his fellow Italian Leonardo da Vinci.
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived.<br/><br/> His genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. Leonardo has often been described as the archetype of the Renaissance Man.
Leon Battista Alberti (February 14, 1404 – April 25, 1472) was an Italian humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher and cryptographer; he epitomised the Renaissance Man.
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 – 13 December 1466), better known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance sculptor from Florence. He studied classical sculpture, and used this to develop a fully Renaissance style in sculpture, whose periods in Rome, Padua and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy a long and productive career.<br/><br/> Donatello worked in stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco and wax, and had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number. Though his best-known works were mostly statues in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was larger architectural reliefs.
Giotto di Bondone (1266/7 – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence in the late Middle Ages. He is generally considered the first in a line of great artists who contributed to the Renaissance.
Nicola Pisano (also called Niccolò Pisano, Nicola de Apulia or Nicola Pisanus; c. 1220/1225 – c. 1284) was an Italian sculptor whose work is noted for its classical Roman sculptural style. Pisano is sometimes considered to be the founder of modern sculpture. His works are the most important precursors of Italian Renaissance sculpture.
Monuments officer Captain Deane Keller visited the Florentine museum repository at Montegufoni during the winter of 1944–45. Botticelli’s world-famous masterpiece, <i>Primavera</i>, was just one of the 246 paintings that had been stored at Montegufoni for safekeeping by Italian officials.<br/><br/> More disturbing was the disappearance of some 700 paintings and sculpture from the Uffizi, Pitti, and Bargelo museums, emptied by retreating German forces. From that moment, the Monuments Men began their work as art detectives, tracking every clue to determine the locations of the missing masterpieces.
<i>Primavera</i>, also known as <i>Allegory of Spring</i>, is a tempera panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli.<br/><br/> The history of the painting is not definitely known, though it seems to have been commissioned by one of the Medici family. It contains references to the Roman poets Ovid and Lucretius, and may also reference a poem by Poliziano.<br/><br/> Since 1919 the painting has been part of the collection of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.
In the <i>Calumny of Apelles</i>, Botticelli drew on the description of a painting by Apelles, a Greek painter of the Hellenistic Period. Though Apelles' works have not survived, Lucian recorded details of one in his On Calumny:<br/><br/> 'On the right of it sits Midas with very large ears, extending his hand to Slander while she is still at some distance from him. Near him, on one side, stand two women—Ignorance and Suspicion. On the other side, Slander is coming up, a woman beautiful beyond measure, but full of malignant passion and excitement, evincing as she does fury and wrath by carrying in her left hand a blazing torch and with the other dragging by the hair a young man who stretches out his hands to heaven and calls the gods to witness his innocence.<br/><br/> She is conducted by a pale ugly man who has piercing eye and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness; he represents envy. There are two women in attendance to Slander, one is Fraud and the other Conspiracy. They are followed by a woman dressed in deep mourning, with black clothes all in tatters—she is Repentance. At all events, she is turning back with tears in her eyes and casting a stealthy glance, full of shame, at Truth, who is slowly approaching'.
Open-top trucks hastily loaded with some of the Florentine treasures, including this painting from the Uffizi—Luca Signorelli’s <i>Crucifixion</i>—began arriving in the northern Italian region of Alto Adige on August 13, 1944.<br/><br/> German soldiers transported the uncrated paintings over hundreds of miles of poor-quality roads with little more protection than straw. Worried the art would be transported into the Reich, Italian officials desperately tried to regain control of their treasures, to no avail. The location of the German hiding places eluded the Monuments Men until the last two weeks of the war.