Renaissance Italy
the city-state art revival
The Italian Patchwork
five competing city-states on a peninsula that wouldn't be a country until 1861
~1300 setting
The Trecento
Dante, Giotto, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and the Black Death that reshaped the cultural conversation
1300–1400
The Quattrocento
Brunelleschi's dome, Donatello's David, Cosimo de' Medici, and the Florentine cultural explosion
1400–1490
The High Renaissance
Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael, papal Rome, and the Sack of Rome that ended it
1490–1527
Venice and the Sea
the maritime republic, the Bellinis, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and the victory at Lepanto
1450–1600
The Reformation Threat
Erasmus, Luther's break with Rome, the Italian Inquisition, and the Council of Trent
1517–1563
Music, Print, and Counter-Reformation
Palestrina's polyphony, Monteverdi and the birth of opera, Venetian printing, and Galileo's early conflicts
1545–1610
The Decline and the Legacy
Spanish domination, cultural diffusion, and the word 'Renaissance' that was coined three centuries later
1527–present