Dolphins of the Belfiore
Does the intelligent sea mammal, long associated with Venus, the goddess of love, offer a clue to a lost jewel of the Renaissance?
Renaissance
Was there a Women’s Renaissance?
We ask four historians whether the great advances of the Renaissance were extended to women.
Solving a Renaissance Murder Mystery
The most powerful family of Florence and the most powerful man in the world offer a new solution to one of the most notorious crimes of the age.
Murder at the Vatican
An unsolved Renaissance mystery casts light on the dark world of extortion, revenge and power politics at the heart of the Catholic Church.
War, Law and Massacre
The conflicts that devastated Renaissance Europe were justified by ancient ideas rooted in natural law and Christianity. Though replaced by legal frameworks for the conduct of war between states, the killing continues.
Machiavelli: Cynical, Determined, Intelligent and Witty
A rich and complex portrait of the author of The Prince manages to combine scholarly analysis with the imagination of the historical novelist.
Warfare, Terror, Murder and Bloodshed
A compelling narrative on the machinations of a Borgia pope and his offspring, with the added spice of Machiavelli’s cool observations.
The Renaissance and the Ruins of Ancient Rome
Michael Greenhalgh describes how Roman architecture and Graeco-Roman statues made a profound impression upon the great Renaissance artists.
Burckhardt’s Renaissance: 1860-1960
Today it is hardly possible to equate the Italian Renaissance with the modern world, as Burckhardt did a century ago. But, argues Denys Hay, his discerning study has helped to transform the Western attitude to the past, and its influence remains profound.
Before the Humanities, the Humanists
David Rundle looks at the current state of the humanities, asking whether we can recapture the confidence and broad cultural ambition of the Renaissance’s studia humanitatis, which sought to define what it is to be human.