The Renaissance

By antoniajanet
  • Jan 1, 1449

    Birth of Lorenzo de’ Medici

    The most powerful and enthusiastic patron of Renaissance culture in Italy.
  • 1455

    Gutenberg prints the first Bible

    Gutenberg produced what is considered to be the first book ever printed: a Latin language Bible, printed in Mainz, Germany.
  • 1503

    Leonardo da Vinci paints the Mona Lisa

    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
  • 1504

    Michelangelo sculpts the David

    David is a masterpiece of Renaissance sculpture created in marble between 1501 and 1504 by the Italian artist Michelangelo
  • 1516

    Thomas More writes Utopia

    The book Utopia paved way for the Utopian literature. In the novel a traveler Raphael describes an imaginary country on an island, Utopia, to More and Pieter Gillis.
  • 1517

    Martin Luther posts 95 Theses on the door of Castle Church

    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.
  • 1534

    King Henry VIII begins Protestant Anglican church

    King Henry VIII declared himself to be supreme head of the Church of England. This resulted in a schism with the Papacy. As a result of this schism, many non-Anglicans consider that the Church of England only existed from the 16th century Protestant Reformation.
  • 1543

    Nicolas Copernicus publishes On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres

    placed the sun at the center of the universe and argued that the Earth moved across the heavens as one of the planets
  • Apr 23, 1564

    William Shakespeare is born

    the great English dramatist and poet

  • Galileo invents a thermometer

    Galileo Galilei discovered that the density of liquids (how much they contract and expand) reacts predictably to changes in temperature. ... Because his device did not have a numerical temperature scale, it is not technically considered a thermometer. This early thermometer is more precisely called a thermoscope.