The Renaissance Times

Taking a short break from Leonardo, our guest today is Julia Charity , an official Vatican tour guide! Julia, who originally hails from the UK, tells us how she ended up as a Vatican tour guide and about some of her favourite art on display in the Pope’s fortress, including “The Last Judgment” by Michelangelo, the “Transfiguration” by her “Renaissance husband&#8...

Curtis Wong has had an incredible career. He has produced critically acclaimed educational CD-ROMs at Corbis and the Voyager Co., as well as the definitive editions of feature films for the Criterion Collection. He ran   the Content Group at Intel, and was granted many patents at Microsoft Research. Today he joins us to tell some stories from his career, including his groundbreaking work with Bill...

We chat with one of the world’s leading authorities on Leonardo da Vinci – Matthew Landrus from Oxford University, author of Leonardo da Vinci’s Giant Crossbow.   The post #118 – Leonardo da Vinci Part 11 – Matthew Landrus appeared first on The Renaissance Times .

If you’re wondering “where are rest of the episodes?”, they are on our website as part of our membership program. The post Where are rest of the episodes? appeared first on The Renaissance Times .

“Extraordinary power … conjoined with remarkable facility, a mind of regal boldness and magnanimous daring.” That’s how Vasari described Leonardo da Vinci. But how much do we really know about the world’s most famous artist? And how much of what we think we know is myth? The post #108 – Leonardo da Vinci Part 1 – A Complete Bastard appeared first on The Re...

With Charles out of the picture, Piero de Medici figures it’s time to return to Florence. He marched into Tuscany with a force of four hundred lancers, light cavalry, and foot soldiers. Unfortunately, nobody shows up to welcome him and he went back into exile. But his attempt to return sets off a series of political assassinations in Florence, supported by Savonarola. Civil tensions increase until...

Savonarola’s predictions that God was going to punish the Florentines seem to be coming true when, in 1494, King Charles VIII of France invades Italy to take control of Naples. On his way south, he also threatens to attack Florence. When Piero de Medici tries to negotiate a settlement, it’s a complete failure. So the Signoria send Savonarola to meet with the king instead.   The post #99 &#821...

In 1492, Lorenzo The Magnificent died. His heir was his eldest son, 20 year old Piero de’ Medici, a useless turd. The Pope died soon afterwards and was replaced by the corrupt Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia as Pope Alexander VI. Savonarola proclaimed that the “Sword of the Lord” would soon descend upon Florence to punish it for its wicked ways. In this case, the sword would soon be carried another 20 yea...

After Lorenzo de Medici’s death in 1492, Botticelli gave up painting, abandoned his humanist studies, and became a hardcore fundamentalist Christian. As did a lot of Florentines. The reason? They all fell under the spell of the original fire and brimstone preacher. He wasn’t rich. He didn’t have an army. He wasn’t of the nobility. He wasn’t sent by the pope. In fact, the Pope hated him. But he man...

During Lorenzo de Medici’s life, no fewer than three of the outstanding artists of the Renaissance are thought to have spent at least a brief formative period of their early lives in the Palazzo Medici: Leonardo and Michelangelo and the one we’re going to talk about for the next few episodes – the great Sandro Botticelli. There's something secret here that only members can see. Probabl...

When the Inquisition came to your town, they would grant you 30 days to confess to being a heretic. This was known as the “Edicts Of Grace”. If you confessed, you might get a hefty fine, but at least you wouldn’t end up in prison or burned at the stake. Of course, many conversos decided it was the smart move to confess – whether they actually were a crytpo-Jew or not. The p...

On this episode we discuss the artist Poliziano, who popularised the new sophistication and learning expected of a gentleman; Mirandola, who at age 23 decided to debate the entire world; and the magnificent breasts of Simonetta Vespucci. The post #81 – Introducing The Gentleman appeared first on The Renaissance Times .

Early in his rule, Lorenzo de’ Medici cracked down on the town of Volterra, resulting in rampage, murdering, looting and raping. Meanwhile, in Milan, on the day after Christmas 1476, Galeazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, was stabbed by three noblemen as he entered church. And Larry upsets Pope Sixtus IV over a loan request, which leads to an assassination attempt in 1478 on both Lorenzo and his br...

Lorenzo de’ Medici throws himself a jousting tournament to take Florence’s minds off the fact he’s marrying a Roman girl. The ‘Queen of the Tournament’ was Lucrezia Donati, a Florentine hottie who Lorenzo was writing love poetry about, even thought she was married to someone else. His bride, Clarice Orsini, arrived in Florence a while later, and they were married just before Pier...

It’s been a while since we have caught up with Cosimo de Medici. Four years after his return to Florence in 1434, he secured a huge opportunity for Florence, that would have far reaching effects on the Renaissance – hosting the Ecumenical Council between the East and West churches. This saw a contingent of 700 Greek scholars and theologians come to Florence for an extended stay. They brought...

In 1453, when the Turks took Constantinople, Pope Nicky 5 wanted a crusade and authorized the sale of letters of indulgence—religious documents that released the buyers from penalties for their sins. And guess who printed them? Then he finally got around to working on his masterpiece and the book he is most remembered for – the “42-line Bible,” aka the Gutenberg Bible. But just before the pr...

Commercial opportunities for a printing press went beyond books. One of those was the Fall of Constantinople. In 1453, the Ottoman Empire lead by 21-year-old Sultan Mehmed II defeated the army of Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Byzantine Emperor. To tell this story we also need to talk about The Great Schism, how and why Christianity split into east and west camps. Because there’s nothi...

Hand carving a piece of metal type for a printing press would take a skilled craftsman an entire day. Just setting one page of the Bible would take 2600 pieces of type. So Gutenberg needed to come up with an efficient way to manufacture type – which is a lot harder than it sounds. He also needed to invent the printing press. On this episode we go through how he did those things – and then talk abo...

One of Gutenberg’s partners died, and the guy’s brothers wanted in on the secret project. Gutenberg refused, so they took him to court. Then in 1444, Gutenberg left Strasbourg and went… where? We don’t know. He disappeared for three years. Some interesting conspiracy theories about where he might have gone. We also talk about the people who invented movable type before Gutenberg… the CHINESE! CHIN...

In 1428, Gutenberg moved to Strasbourg where he would live for the next 20 years. It was there that he had his first big business venture—making holy healing ray containment devices. He brought on investors who later became suspicious that he was holding out on them. He had a secret project that he was working on. And they wanted in. The post #66 – Gutenberg Part 2 appeared first on The Rena...

Today we begin a series about the man without whom our podcasts would not exist because there would be no books. And you know we get all of our knowledge from books. The man who invented movable type and the printing press (or did he?). Johannes Gutenberg. The post #65 – Gutenberg Part 1 appeared first on The Renaissance Times .

Born 1401 as Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, “ Masaccio ” (his nickname) was regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, he was the best painter of his generation. The first painter in the Renaissance who really understood linear perspective. He died age only 26, in 1428. “Masaccio,” said Leonardo da Vinci,...

Born Guido di Pietro but known to us as Fra Angelico which means the “Angelic friar”. Despite his early talent for painting, at age 12 he entered the Dominican order and spent the rest of his life in convents, painting their walls. Admired by Cosimo de Medici and extremely influential to the early Renaissance artists, he was one of the first to start to incorporate linear perspective....

The first written work of art theory, produced during the Renaissance was “De Pictura”, or “On Painting”, written in 1435 by Leon Battista Alberti but not published until 1450, in which he explained the science behind linear perspective. He was a humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, mathematician and cryptographer. He also wrote the first autobiography since St...

After returning to Rome to work for the Vatican, Poggio Bracciolini starting making some serious money of his own. Enough to get married and buy a big house. He served as chancellor of Florence for five years. After he died, Lucretius kept working its magic on the people of Europe. Forty years later, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola ruled Florence for several years as a strict “Christian re...