The Renaissance

Transmission of Greek Text during 4th Crusades

1202

Birth of Lorenzo de’ Medici

1449

Lorenzo de' Medici was Florentine statesman, ruler and patron of arts and letters, the most brilliant of the Medici.

Gutenberg prints the first Bible

1455

Johann Gutenberg holds the distinction of being the inventor of the movable-type printing press.

Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa

1503

The Mona Lisa is a half-length portrait painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci that has been described as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world".

Michelangelo sculpts the David

1504

David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created in marble between 1501 and 1504 by the Italian artist Michelangelo. David is a 5.17-metre (17.0 ft)[a] marble statue of a standing male nude. The statue represents the Biblical hero David, a favoured subject in the art of Florence.[1]

Martin Luther posts 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church

1517

On this day in 1517, the priest and scholar Martin Luther approaches the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, and nails a piece of paper to it containing the 95 revolutionary opinions that would begin the Protestant Reformation.

Thomas More writes Utopia

1535

Utopia (Libellus vere aureus, nec minus salutaris quam festivus, de optimo rei publicae statu deque nova insula Utopia) is a work of fiction and socio-political satire by Thomas More (1478–1535) published in 1516 in Latin.

Nicolas Copernicus publishes On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres

1543

De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the revolutions of the heavenly spheres), written by Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) and published just before his death, placed the sun at the center of the universe and argued that the Earth moved across the heavens as one of the planets.

King Henry VIII begins Protestant Anglican church

1549

Under King Henry VIII in the 16th century, the Church of England broke with Rome, largely because Pope Clement VII refused to grant Henry an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. ... Upon Henry's death, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer began changes that allied the Church of England with the Reformation.

William Shakespeare is born

1564

English poet

Galileo invents a thermometer

1603

Although named after the 16th–17th-century physicist Galileo, the thermometer described in this article was not invented by him. Galileo did invent a thermometer, called Galileo's air thermometer (more accurately termed a thermoscope)