From Giotto and Petrarch to the Sack of Rome — the rebirth of classical learning, art, and political thought in the city-states of Italy. Slide across the centuries to read the major events that transformed Florence, Rome, and Venice into the cradle of the modern West.
Giotto di Bondone completes the fresco cycle in Padua, breaking from Byzantine convention with a new naturalism that anticipates the Renaissance.
From Giotto and Petrarch to the Sack of Rome — the rebirth of classical learning, art, and political thought in the city-states of Italy. Slide across the centuries to read the major events that transformed Florence, Rome, and Venice into the cradle of the modern West.
Giotto di Bondone completes the fresco cycle in Padua, breaking from Byzantine convention with a new naturalism that anticipates the Renaissance.
Francesco Petrarca is crowned poet laureate on the Capitoline Hill in Rome, reviving an ancient honour and inaugurating Renaissance humanism.
Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici founds the Medici Bank in Florence, building the financial foundation for a dynasty that will dominate Renaissance patronage.
Lorenzo Ghiberti wins the celebrated competition to design the bronze north doors of the Florence Baptistery, defeating Filippo Brunelleschi.
Filippo Brunelleschi finishes the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, an engineering marvel and the defining symbol of the Florentine Renaissance.
After the fall of Constantinople, Greek scholars and manuscripts flee to Italy, fuelling humanist studies in Florence, Venice and Rome.
Lorenzo de' Medici becomes de facto ruler of Florence, presiding over a golden age of art, poetry and Neoplatonic philosophy.
Sandro Botticelli completes The Birth of Venus for the Medici, fusing classical mythology with Christian Neoplatonism.
The Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who had ruled Florence as a moral republic and burned the 'vanities', is hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria.
Leonardo da Vinci begins the portrait of Lisa Gherardini, working on it for years; it becomes the most celebrated painting in Western art.
Pope Julius II commissions Michelangelo Buonarroti to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; he labours four years to complete it.
Niccolò Machiavelli, exiled from Florentine politics, composes Il Principe, founding modern political philosophy.
Mutinous troops of Charles V sack Rome, devastating the city and traditionally marking the end of the High Renaissance in Italy.
Michelangelo Buonarroti dies in Rome at 88, having shaped a century of art from the Pietà to the dome of St Peter's.
The philosopher Giordano Bruno is burned at the stake in the Campo de' Fiori for heresy, a moment often taken to mark the end of the Italian Renaissance.