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https://padlet.com/josie_cullinane/h4uzv4cfpw1wq5rn

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A Queen's Doctor is Executed For Treason

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A Queen's Doctor is Executed For Treason

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On June 7, 1594, Rodrigo Lopez, the official physician to Queen Elizabeth I of England, was executed before a London crowd, on charges that included conspiring to poison the queen.

Lopez was born in Crato, Portugal, in or about 1525, and raised as a Converso - a New Christian who continued to maintain a Jewish identity secretly. In the wake of the Portuguese Inquisition (which began in 1536), Lopez moved to London, where he set up a successful practice as a doctor.

He was appointed house physician at St. Bartholomew's Hospital and tended to a number of highly placed clients, including Robert Dudley, the powerful earl of Leicester, for whom Lopez was at one point accused unsuccessfully of having prepared poisons. He also served Francis Walsingham, who became spymaster to Queen Elizabeth.

In 1586, Lopez was awarded the prestigious position of chief physician to the queen, who three years later bestowed upon him a monopoly on the import of aniseed and sumac.

Lopez seemed to have it all: a home in London's Holborn district, a son studying at Winchester College, the private boarding school established in the 14th century (and still in operation today), and responsibility for the care of the monarch. Outwardly, he led the life of a Protestant, but was part of the small community of other Portuguese Conversos in London who secretly carried on lives as Jews.

But he also had made himself an enemy, in the person of Robert Devereux, the earl of Essex, a former patient about whose medical record an indiscreet Lopez revealed details publicly. It was Essex who in 1594 accused Lopez of plotting against the queen.

Damning cryptic letters and torture

Lopez had apparently become involved in a plot against Don Antonio, the pretender to the Portuguese crown, who was now in exile in England. In early 1594, two servants to Antonio were arrested on suspicion of being double agents working for the Spanish monarchy. Orders were given to port officials at crossings to Spain to confiscate all suspicious correspondence passing through the port.

Within weeks, a Portuguese man living in England was arrested as he entered the country; on his person was found a cryptic letter addressed to an unknown person.

Though the prisoner, Gomez d'Avila, would reveal no details of his mission, he was overheard asking someone he encountered during this questioning to carry word of his arrest to Dr. Lopez.

In the meantime, a letter had been intercepted from Esteban Ferreira, one of the two men arrested earlier on charges of plotting against Antonio. In the note, he warned Lopez to do anything he could to prevent Gomez d'Avila from entering England, otherwise, "the Doctor would be undone without remedy."

Lopez's response, similarly intercepted, assured Ferreira that he "would spare no expense" to keep Gomez from coming.

When Ferreira was confronted with the two letters, he told his interrogators that Lopez had long been in the pay of Spain and was plotting to poison Don Antonio. Gomez was then tortured, and he confessed his involvement in a similar plot.

Essex oversaw the investigation of the unfolding plot, which grew increasingly complex. What became clear to him, however, was that his nemesis, Dr. Lopez, seemed to have been in the service of the Spanish crown.

Lopez was arrested, denied any wrongdoing, and Queen Elizabeth was inclined to release him. But Essex continued to dig into the case, until one of the servants of Don Antonio made the explicit claim that Lopez had agreed to undertake to poison the queen on behalf of Spain, for a price of 50,000 crowns.

Lopez was questioned again, and confessed to the charges. A jubilant Essex wrote to a friend: "I have discovered a most dangerous and desperate treason. The point of conspiracy was her Majesty's death. The executioner should have been Dr Lopez; the manner poison. This I have so followed as I will make it appear clear as noon day."

At his trial, in February 1594 Lopez claimed his confession had been induced under torture, but that did not prevent his conviction.

Although Rodrigo Lopez was sentenced to death, the queen was reluctant to see the punishment carried out, and for months, the warrant for his death remained unsigned Only on June 7, 1594, was he taken from the Tower of London and hanged, drawn and quartered before a public audience. He is reported to have continued to maintain his innocence to the final moment, and to have declared before his death that he loved his queen as well as he loved Jesus. The crowd understood the remark as ironic and jeered at the convicted man.

A widely held literary theory suggests that Shakespeare based the character of Shylock, in "The Merchant of Venice," written between 1596 and 1598, on Dr. Lopez. One piece of evidence for this is that Shylock's enemy in the play is Antonio.

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1594: A queen's doctor is executed for treason

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On June 7, 1594, Rodrigo Lopez, the official physician to Queen Elizabeth I of England, was executed before a London crowd, on charges that included conspiring to poison the queen. Lopez was born in Crato, Portugal, in or about 1525, and raised as a Converso - a New Christian who continued to maintain a Jewish identity secretly.

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What Was Humanism? AP Euro Bit by Bit #2

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Renaissance Man - HD VERSION ("Blister In the Sun" by the Violent Femmes)

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The Forgotten History of Florence's Mixed-Race Medici

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The Forgotten History of Florence's Mixed-Race Medici

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The Forgotten History of Florence’s Mixed-Race Medici

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It was the eve of Epiphany, 1537, a night of the most dazzling moon­light. Alessandro de’ Medici, duke of Florence, had an assignation. His cousin Lorenzino, little Lorenzo, had promised him the fa…

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Dale Kent, Professorial Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne and author of Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance (Yale, 2000).

The Renaissance was a rebirth of interest in classical Greek and Roman culture, submerged in the rise of medieval Christianity. Historians, responding to the magic of names such as da Vinci and Michelangelo, inserted this concept between medieval and modern eras, artificially extending it to social and economic developments.

While Lorenzo de' Medici fostered the creativity of classicising artists, writers and thinkers, his sister Nannina reflected bitterly, after a fight with her father-in-law: 'Don't be born a woman in Florence, if you want your own way.'

Arguably one overarching lesson of history is that the best time to be born a woman will be tomorrow. As always, and everywhere, women's experience in the Renaissance depended upon the regulation of their sexuality, their economic and political roles, their education and the expectations of their culture.

Elite women in court societies, who could inherit wealth and a measure of power, received classical educations, contributed to literature and became patrons of the arts. In the oppressively patriarchal Republic of Florence, the exclusion of women from public life and spaces, combined with an obsession with protecting the purity of the male bloodline, could make them virtual prisoners in their own houses. Classical culture emphasised human experience and large, eminent lineages like that of the Medici were communities in which women could enjoy influence, thanks to the love and respect of enlightened menfolk. But a French traveller in 1610 marvelled that Florentine women 'see the world only from the small openings in their windows'. Women were not infrequently injured falling out of windows, perhaps in an effort to extend their horizons.

Working-class women had greater freedom of movement, but suffered as sexual servants, despite the development of increasingly efficient state bureaucracies to regulate health and welfare.

The church remained predominant in shaping the image of women, as either Eve, to blame for the ills of mankind, or the Virgin Mary, untouched by the complex humanity of men.

'Scholars cannot speak about women as a single category'

Elizabeth S. Cohen, Professor of History at York University, Toronto and author of Daily Life in Renaissance Italy (ABC-CLIO, 2019).

'Renaissance' labels an era of western European history, variously dated from the 14th to the 16th centuries, which opened a bold, transformative 'modernity'. Renaissance intellectuals saw themselves launching a brighter age, but they framed it culturally and religiously, not as novelty but as renewal. Rather, we owe to 19th-century scholars our upbeat sense of an innovative historical moment. Jacob Burckhardt's catchy formulations highlighted discovery and invention of the state, the individual and the arts. As history, however, this Renaissance was deeply incomplete.

In the 1970s, as second-wave feminism reopened the 'woman question', Joan Kelly-Gadol posed the question that we re-engage here: did women have a Renaissance? No, she answered, women's history traced a different course from men's. Although drawing mostly on literary sources, Kelly Gadol asserted that structural and institutional, as well as ideological, developments during the Renaissance made things not better for women, but worse.

Kelly-Gadol's intuition was right. Certainly, women, always with notable exceptions, took little part in Burckhardt's Renaissance. Since the 1970s, however, decades of energetic research have complicated the story of the progress or constriction of women's lot. One major lesson: just as scholars do not lump all men together, they cannot speak effectively about 'women' as a single category. For the highly stratified societies of Renaissance Europe, historians must differentiate by social rank, marital status, family relationships, rural and urban milieus, and religion, race and culture. Much-cited imperatives that all women be 'chaste, silent, and obedient' were authorities' aspirations and far from descriptions of real life. Although women were never the equals of men of their class, variable rules gave them legal responsibilities and agencies. Despite modern feminist rhetoric, most women were neither property nor slaves. In practice, women did crucial work of many kinds on which they and their families depended. Nothing new there, but the Renaissance did deliver the 'revolution' of print and expanding literacy that, with time, brought more women spaces for personal, spiritual and creative work.

'Was there even a "Renaissance"?'

Kate Maltby, Critic and PhD student in the English Department at University College London.

Was there even a 'Renaissance'? Most academics no longer use the word, but refer to 'the early modern period', a term which stresses continuity with modernity. Being old-fashioned, I still like the term 'Renaissance', because it places significance on the rediscovery of classical literature - but when did that happen? Joan Kelly-Gadol defined the Renaissance as a cultural phenomenon that occurred in Italy between 1350 and 1530. Fair. But across the rest of Europe something that looked like the Italian Renaissance arrived at wildly differing times. (Nobody can agree when.) What we consider the English Renaissance occurred much later and meant different things for English than for Italian women.

Kelly-Gadol's essay looks at elite women - she stretches it to include 'lesser aristocratic women as well as the great'. Before the Renaissance, she writes, 'courtly love' traditions had detached sex from marriage and celebrated even adulterous female desire. But it is dangerous to assume that, because a phenomenon was celebrated in literature, it was therefore tolerated by real medieval husbands. Kelly-Gadol cites Eleanor of Aquitaine as a powerful woman who got away with adultery, but it did not stop her second husband imprisoning her, or her first husband taking custody of her daughters.

One thing that did lead to a liberation of female desire was the rise of Protestant sexual morality in the Reformation, which attacked priestly celibacy and acknowledged that sexual desire was human. Yes, this was to be satisfied only in marriage. But the decline of the cult of celibacy was essential to the decline of the cult of virginity.

Meanwhile, the rise in women's literacy is attested by our knowledge of women who formed letter-writing networks, a newly popular medium for female solidarity. In England, Isabella Whitney became the first women to support herself by selling her own poetry. Meanwhile, bourgeois women in Europe benefited materially from the emergence of capitalism and colonialism. These European women had a Renaissance; the African women on the first transatlantic slave trips did not.

'Literature was different'

Catherine Fletcher, Author of The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History of the Italian Renaissance (Bodley Head, 2020).

Only one woman gets a chapter in Giorgio Vasari's The Lives of the Artists, the 16th-century text that established a canon of Renaissance art. That is Properzia de' Rossi, a sculptor from Bologna, into whose section Vasari also crammed the handful of other women he judged worthy of note, including the Florentine nun Plautilla Nelli, whose Last Supper has recently been restored, and Sofonisba Anguissola, who had a successful career as a portraitist at the court of Philip II of Spain. It was hard for women to break into the visual arts: that required an apprenticeship. Those who did often had family connections to the art world.

Literature was different. Numerous Italian women wrote prose and poetry in the 15th and 16th centuries. The best known is Vittoria Colonna, whose prominence is in part due to her friendship with a famous man, Michelangelo. Others included Veronica Gambara, who exchanged poems with Colonna, Laura Cereta, who argued for women's right to education, and Cassandra Fedele, who gave a formal oration when the queen of Poland visited Venice in 1556. Colonna was a member of an important Roman baronial family, while Gambara was part of the Brescian nobility. Literary endeavours, however, were not restricted to noblewomen. Tullia d'Aragona, who wrote a Dialogue on the Infinity of Love, combined work as a courtesan and writer, as did Veronica Franco. By 1559 a Venetian publisher could issue a collection of poetry featuring works by 53 women. Others played significant roles as patrons, most famously Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua and one of many Renaissance consorts who found themselves running states and households during their husbands' absences in the Italian Wars of 1494-1559. Wartime upheaval may have been a factor in the flourishing of women's writing in the 1530s and 1540s, and likewise the lively debates on religion between the beginning of the Protestant Reformation in 1517 and the Council of Trent (1545-63).

While certain aspects of the Italian Renaissance - notably the civic humanism of the Florentine republic - were overwhelmingly male, plenty of women carved out space for themselves in its wider cultural sphere.

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Dale Kent, Professorial Fellow, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne and author of Cosimo de' Medici and the Florentine Renaissance (Yale, 2000). The Renaissance was a rebirth of interest in classical Greek and Roman culture, submerged in the rise of medieval Christianity.

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Introduction

Renaissance music is music written in Europe during the Renaissance. Consensus among music historians-with notable dissent-has been to start the era around 1400, with the end of the medieval era, and to close it around 1600, with the beginning of the baroque period, therefore commencing the musical Renaissance about a hundred years after the beginning of the Renaissance as understood in other disciplines. As in the other arts, the music of the period was significantly influenced by the developments which define the early modern period: the rise of humanistic thought; the recovery of the literary and artistic heritage of ancient Greece and Rome; increased innovation and discovery; the growth of commercial enterprise; the rise of a bourgeois class; and the Protestant Reformation. From this changing society emerged a common, unifying musical language, in particular the polyphonic style of the Franco-Flemish school.

The invention of the Gutenberg press made distribution of music and musical theory possible on a wide scale. Demand for music as entertainment and as an activity for educated amateurs increased with the emergence of a bourgeois class. Dissemination of chansons, motets, and masses throughout Europe coincided with the unification of polyphonic practice into the fluid style which culminated in the second half of the sixteenth century in the work of composers such as Palestrina, Lassus, Victoria and William Byrd. Relative political stability and prosperity in the Low Countries, along with a flourishing system of music education in the area's many churches and cathedrals, allowed the training of hundreds of singers and composers. These musicians were highly sought throughout Europe, particularly in Italy, where churches and aristocratic courts hired them as composers and teachers. By the end of the sixteenth century, Italy had absorbed the northern influences, with Venice, Rome, and other cities being centers of musical activity, reversing the situation from a hundred years earlier. Opera arose at this time in Florence as a deliberate attempt to resurrect the music of ancient Greece.

Music, increasingly freed from medieval constraints, in range, rhythm, harmony, form, and notation, became a vehicle for new personal expression. Composers found ways to make music expressive of the texts they were setting. Secular music absorbed techniques from sacred music, and vice versa. Popular secular forms such as the chanson and madrigal spread throughout Europe. Courts employed virtuoso performers, both singers and instrumentalists. Music also became more self-sufficient with its availability in printed form, existing for its own sake. Many familiar modern instruments (including the violin, guitar, lute and keyboard instruments), developed into new forms during the Renaissance responding to the evolution of musical ideas, presenting further possibilities for composers and musicians to explore. Modern woodwind and brass instruments like the bassoon and trombone also appeared; extending the range of sonic color and power. During the fifteenth century the sound of full triads became common, and towards the end of the sixteenth-century the system of church modes began to break down entirely, giving way to the functional tonality which was to dominate western art music for the next three centuries.

From the Renaissance era both secular and sacred music survives in quantity, and both vocal and instrumental. An enormous diversity of musical styles and genres flourished during the Renaissance, and can be heard on commercial recordings in the twenty-first century, including masses, motets, madrigals, chansons, accompanied songs, instrumental dances, and many others. Numerous early music ensembles specializing in music of the period give concert tours and make recordings, using a wide range of interpretive styles.

One of the most pronounced features of early Renaissance European art music was the increasing reliance on the interval of the third (in the Middle Ages, thirds had been considered dissonances). Polyphony became increasingly elaborate throughout the fourteenth century, with highly independent voices: the beginning of the fifteenth century showed simplification, with the voices often striving for smoothness. This was possible because of a greatly increased vocal range in music-in the Middle Ages, the narrow range made necessary frequent crossing of parts, thus requiring a greater contrast between them.

The modal (as opposed to tonal) characteristics of Renaissance music began to break down towards the end of the period with the increased use of root motions of fifths. This later developed into one of the defining characteristics of tonality.

The main characteristics of Renaissance music are the following:

Music based on modes

Richer texture in four or more parts

Blending rather than contrasting strands in the musical texture

Harmony with a greater concern with the flow and progression of chords

Polyphony is one of the notable changes that mark the Renaissance from the Middle Ages musically. Its use encouraged the use of larger ensembles and demanded sets of instruments that would blend together across the whole vocal range.

Principal liturgical forms which endured throughout the entire Renaissance period were masses and motets, with some other developments towards the end, especially as composers of sacred music began to adopt secular forms (such as the madrigal) for their own designs.

Common sacred genres were the mass, the motet, the madrigale spirituale, and the laude.

During the period, secular music had an increasing distribution, with a wide variety of forms, but one must be cautious about assuming an explosion in variety: since printing made music more widely available, much more has survived from this era than from the preceding medieval era, and probably a rich store of popular music of the late Middle Ages is irretrievably lost.

Secular music was music that was independent of churches. The main types were the German Lied, Italian frottola, the French chanson, the Italian madrigal, and the Spanish villancico. Other secular vocal genres included the caccia, rondeau, virelai, bergerette, ballade, musique mesurée, canzonetta, villanella, villotta, and the lute song. Mixed forms such as the motet-chanson and the secular motet also appeared.

Purely instrumental music included consort music for recorder or viol and other instruments, and dances for various ensembles. Common instrumental genres were the toccata, prelude, ricercar, and canzona. Dances played by Instrumental ensembles included the basse danse, tourdion, saltarello, pavane, galliard, allemande, courante, bransle, canarie, and lavolta. Music of many genres could be arranged for a solo instrument such as the lute, vihuela, harp, or keyboard. Such arrangements were called intabulations.

Towards the end of the period, the early dramatic precursors of opera such as monody, the madrigal comedy, and the intermedio are seen.

Theory and Notation

According to Margaret Bent, "Renaissance notation is underprescriptive by our standards; when translated into modern form it acquires a prescriptive weight that overspecifies and distorts its original openness."

These different permutations were called "perfect/imperfect tempus" at the level of the breve-semibreve relationship, "perfect/imperfect prolation" at the level of the semibreve-minim, and existed in all possible combinations with each other. Three-to-one was called "perfect," and two-to-one "imperfect." Rules existed also whereby single notes could be halved or doubled in value ("imperfected" or "altered," respectively) when preceded or followed by other certain notes. Notes with black noteheads (such as quarter notes) occurred less often. This development of white mensural notation may be a result of the increased use of paper (rather than vellum), as the weaker paper was less able to withstand the scratching required to fill in solid noteheads; notation of previous times, written on vellum, had been black. Other colors, and later, filled-in notes, were used routinely as well, mainly to enforce the aforementioned imperfections or alterations and to call for other temporary rhythmical changes.

Accidentals were not always specified, somewhat as in certain fingering notations (tablatures) today. However, Renaissance musicians would have been highly trained in dyadic counterpoint and thus possessed this and other information necessary to read a score, "what modern notation requires [accidentals] would then have been perfectly apparent without notation to a singer versed in counterpoint." A singer would interpret his or her part by figuring cadential formulas with other parts in mind, and when singing together musicians would avoid parallel octaves and fifths or alter their cadential parts in light of decisions by other musicians.

It is through contemporary tablatures for various plucked instruments that we have gained much information about what accidentals were performed by the original practitioners.

For information on specific theorists, see Johannes Tinctoris, Franchinus Gaffurius, Heinrich Glarean, Pietro Aron, Nicola Vicentino, Tomás de Santa María, Gioseffo Zarlino, Vicente Lusitano, Vincenzo Galilei, Giovanni Artusi, Johannes Nucius, and Pietro Cerone.

Time Line of Renaissance Composers

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Renaissance music is music written in Europe during the Renaissance. Consensus among music historians-with notable dissent-has been to start the era around 1400, with the end of the medieval era, and to close it around 1600, with the beginning of the baroque period, therefore commencing the musical Renaissance about a hundred years after the beginning of the Renaissance as understood in other disciplines.

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Straight Outta Stratford-Upon-Avon - Shakespeare's Early Days

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Straight Outta Stratford-Upon-Avon - Shakespeare's Early Days

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Straight Outta Stratford-Upon-Avon - Shakespeare's Early Days: Crash Course Theater #14

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An Introduction of Gender in Renaissance Italy

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An Introduction of Gender in Renaissance Italy

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Introduction to gender in renaissance Italy (article) | Khan Academy

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In the current exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, which runs from now until June 9, 2013 at the Princeton University Art Museum, Africans are much more than "present." They appear, disappear, and appear again. Once painted at the margins of a frame, they move to the center. And they are active in a number of political, religious, and economic roles, revealing how people of African descent impacted the development of Europe far earlier than most people know.

While scholars have long studied European exchanges with African culture during the Renaissance, museums have lagged behind. According to curator Joaneath Spicer, this is only the second exhibition in the world to consider the subject. It is the first to engage the public in serious questions about Europeans' perceptions and representations of Africans as well as Africans' historical roles in Renaissance Europe.

The earliest European painting of a girl with African ancestry was not discovered until 1937. This is because the girl was painted over in Jacopo da Pontormo's 1539 "Portrait of Maria Salviati de' Medici and Giulia de' Medici," the work in which she is depicted.

Scholars believe that a dealer selling the painting sometime before 1881 wanted to increase its value. It was thought that the portrait of a pious-looking woman in a voluminous black dress covered by a white veil wouldn't sell well. An intriguing if inaccurate history behind the woman would help move it, and thus the young girl was painted over and the work was sold as a portrait of Vittoria Colonna (1490-1547), a famous poet and friend of Michelangelo who had no children.

After the painting was x-rayed in the mid-20th century, the canvas was cleaned to reveal the long-forgotten girl. Scholars now know that she is Guilia de' Medici (1535-1588), the illegitimate daughter of Alessandro de' Medici (1510-1537), who was the Duke of Florence and of mixed European and African ancestry.

Giulia would go on to marry powerful noblemen and make a prominent place for herself in the Florentine court. The pious-looking woman in the portrait is in fact her father's unmarried cousin and Giulia's guardian.

Giulia's father, Alessandro de' Medici, was officially declared to be the only son of Lorenzo II de' Medici, and as such the next in line to rule Florence. However, it is now believed that Alessandro was the illegitimate child of Cardinal Giulio de' Medici, Lorenzo II's nephew who later became Pope Clement VII, and one of Giulio's African slaves.

Until recently, Alessandro's African ancestry was little acknowledged or discussed. Portraits commissioned by Alessandro himself depict his hair covered by a cap and his face darkened by shadows, helping to obscure the record. However, the 1553 portrait by Agnolo Bronzino included in the exhibition demonstrates that Alessandro had both European and African ancestry.

Alessandro was a formidable ruler, taking control of Florence from republicans who had assumed power following the 1527 sack of Rome. He ruled from 1530 to 1537 and cleared the way for the lengthier reign of his cousin, Cosimo I, who took over after Alessandro was assassinated in an attempt to restore republicans to power.

The recognition of Alessandro and Giulia's African ancestry that is apparent in their portraits raises questions about the diverse ways in which Africans influenced European history during the Renaissance.

Alessandro de' Medici was not the only powerful man of African descent in Europe at the time. The exhibition features portraits of diplomats, scholars, and saints who gained renown.

The exhibition also includes pictures commissioned by the Medici family that depict African rulers. One is of Sultan Caith Bey (1416/18-1496), the Malmuk sultan of Egypt from 1468 to 1496, who frequently negotiated with the Venetian Republic. Another is of Dawit III (1501-1549), Emperor of Ethiopia, where the Portuguese kept an embassy from 1520 to 27.

Images abound of Antonio Manuel, Marquis of Ne-Vunda, a Congolese ambassador who traveled to Rome to visit the Pope in 1608. Ne-Vunda died almost immediately upon arrival, but the completion of his journey was enough reason to honor him. The Pope saw an opportunity to generate publicity about the far reach of papal influence and so arranged a huge funeral procession, commissioned grand funerary monuments, and distributed prints of Ne-Vunda's portrait to the people.

In one print, the ambassador is shown dressed as a Congolese aristocrat whereas in another, he is dressed as a European diplomat. The contrasting images illustrate the conflicting views of Africans that Europeans held at the time.

This double-barreled representation also was common in textual sources that spread knowledge about Africa in Renaissance Europe. After Vasco de Gama traveled in 1497 from Portugal to India by navigating around the African coast, texts about Africa and European interest in Africa grew. With improvements in the printing press, information and ideas about the continent published in encyclopedias, travelogues, and histories was distributed with increasing ease.

In the various documents, examples of which are on display, Africans were depicted both as dangerous and wild, and as law-abiding and punctilious. In some contexts, Africans were depicted naked, which Europeans looked down on, but in others, they were dressed nobly and shown holding court in European style.

Europeans at the time would commonly see pictures of Africans as magi in depictions of Christ's birth. Africans in kingly attire visiting Christ's manger demonstrated the worldwide reach of Christianity.

Textual and visual sources were not Renaissance Europeans' only sources of knowledge about Africa, however. Many Africans lived in Europe both as slaves and as free men and women.

A wide canvas from the Netherlands painted c. 1570-80 depicts the bustling activity of Lisbon's central plaza. Mingling with white subjects, African subjects are seen playing a mandolin or tambourine, chatting with friends, locked in chains, and riding a horse. The large number of African subjects in the picture reflects the city's demographics at the time. About 10% of the population was of African descent, 2% being free men and woman.

The man in the painting who is riding a horse, dressed in a cape, and carrying a sword might be a representation of Joao de Se Paneasco whose career in the Portuguese royal court began as a slave and jester. By 1547 he had become a courtier and was the king's valet. About 1550, he became a nobleman. Surprisingly, courts were places of upward mobility, where favor with the ruling power and natural ability were more important than formal education.

Before European exploration of Africa in the late 14th century, slaves in Europe were brought from the eastern Mediterranean, Russia, or central Asia. With increased trade relations in the 15th century, slaves came increasingly from Africa. Slavery in Renaissance Europe differed from its later counterpart in the Americas.

Slaves in urban settings often worked within a home or small business. They had access to only minimal education and were barred from highly skilled trades. However, they worked in a variety of professions, as bakers, poultry sellers, and blanket makers among other things. Upon their master's death, slaves were set free with provisions to begin a new life. Free Africans in Europe became surgeons, lawyers, teachers, and writers.

The worst positions for slaves were those involving mechanical labor, such as back-breaking galley work and agricultural labor. In domestic work, sexual exploitation was also a risk. However, a child of a European master and African slave could have bright financial and social prospects if a master chose to favor his child, as was the case with Alessandro de' Medici.

This portrait of an African slave was painted during the 1580s. Tiny pins in the front of the subject's dress indicate that she was a dressmaker. The original painting was likely damaged, leaving the master cut out of the picture and the slave now framed as its primary subject.

"Portrait of an African Slave Woman," Annibale Carracci (attributed), Tomasso Brothers, Leeds

The exhibition ends with a shimmering golden statue of St. Benedict of Palermo (1524-1589), who was born of slave parents. He joined a Franciscan convent where he later became a cook. He led such a pious and exemplary life that he was asked to lead his order, despite having no education. He declined, but was revered until his death for his devotion. In the statue on display, he is ironically portrayed draped in gold, despite having won his renown by living in pious austerity.

Today St. Benedict of Palermo is cherished by Catholics across the Americas, from Chicago, USA to Valencia, Venezuela, making him the African of Renaissance Europe with the widest and longest-lasting impact.

This exhibition should spark increased attention to other Africans, both prominent and everyday citizens, and their contributions to a formative period in European history, which in turn has shaped the world we live in today.

Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe was first shown at the Walters Museum in Baltimore, Maryland and is now at the Princeton University Art Museum, where it will be shown through June 9, 2013. For further information about the exhibition and its catalog, click here.

Join us on Facebook for updates on the latest in history! Click here or click on the icon to the left.

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In the current exhibition Revealing the African Presence in Renaissance Europe, which runs from now until June 9, 2013 at the Princeton University Art Museum, Africans are much more than "present." They appear, disappear, and appear again. Once painted at the margins of a frame, they move to the center.

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The English Renaissance and NOT Shakespeare

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The English Renaissance and NOT Shakespeare

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Crash Course Theater
The Renaissance came to England late, thanks to a Hundred Years War that ran long and a civil war to decide who would be the royal family. BUT after that, there was a flowering of humanism, science, and culture. Theater was a big part of it. Today, we're talking about the London theater scene and the playwrights that set the stage...ahem...for the main man of English Theater, William Shakespeare.

Aired: 09/17/18

Rating: NR

From:

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Crash Course Theater | The English Renaissance and NOT Shakespeare | Episode 13

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Crash Course Theater The Renaissance came to England late, thanks to a Hundred Years War that ran long and a civil war to decide who would be the royal family. BUT after that, there was a flowering of humanism, science, and culture. Theater was a big part of it.

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Noah Charney: Why is the Mona Lisa so famous?

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More than 500 years after its creation, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” is arguably the world’s most famous painting. Many scholars consider it an outstanding work of Renaissance art— but history is full of great paintings. So, how did this particular portrait skyrocket to unprecedented fame? Noah Charney explores the factors that helped create a worldwide sensation. [Directed by Avi Ofer, narrated by Addison Anderson, music by Stephen LaRosa].

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What’s so special about Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man? With arms outstretched, the man fills the irreconcilable spaces of a circle and a square -- symbolizing the Renaissance-era belief in the mutable nature of humankind. James Earle explains the geometric, religious and philosophical significan…

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If Churchill hadn't been prime minister during World War Two, he would still be one of the most accomplished men of the past century. The great wartime leader won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1953 and one of his paintings recently sold for £1.8m.

Polymaths - those who have expertise in many different areas - are known as Renaissance men, because so many all-round geniuses emerged in the period. The painter/ scientist/ philosopher/ engineer Leonardo da Vinci is the archetypal example - but what leads some people to be brilliant at everything?

Geniuses are incredibly rare (some argue there are no more than one genius per million people), and it seems inconceivable that a brilliant physicist could also be a first-rate musician.

But Robert Plomin, professor of behavioural genetics at King's College London, argues that those with exceptional intelligence tend to be brilliant in many areas, not just one. "If you're smarter then you think more strategically, regardless of the role," he says. "The idea is, if you're very smart then you play your cards better."

Somebody who excels - whether in sports, music or the arts - tends to have above average IQ. And those who insist that they're brilliant in just one subject aren't simply being modest - they consider their other talents to be poor compared to their greatest achievement.

"People will often say, 'I'm good at this but no good at that', but really what they mean is that they're less relatively good at the other thing. Compared to everybody, they're actually good in both," says Plomin.

The stereotype of a scientist with no social skills or appreciation for the arts is nothing more than a myth. "A lot of people think that boffins are only good at one thing. I think that's a bit of envy," says Plomin. "People say, 'They're good at that but horrible human beings', and that's generally not true."

But although geniuses may have the potential to be brilliant in many ways, we can only measure performance, not abstract ability. The contemporary focus on specialisation means that modern geniuses aren't encouraged to expand their knowledge in the same way as Renaissance men.

An Aesop's fable tells the tale of a hedgehog who knows a lot about one little subject, and a fox who knows a little about a lot of subjects - academia today seems more receptive to hedgehogs than foxes, says Plomin.

"Nowadays the training is so specialised, they wouldn't let you develop talent in other areas. But the big advances come from the foxes who know a little bit about a lot of things and can put two and two together, rather than the hedgehogs in the trenches who are burrowing away and trying to find out more and more about less," he says.

Of course, most of us would love the chance to be a hedgehog and be considered a genius in our field. But if you're already a hedgehog then it's difficult not to wonder: how does the world look from the perspective of a fox?

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The Polymath | Content | What makes a Renaissance man? - The Telegraph

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A painting by Sir Winston Churchill has sold for £1.8m – so why are some people brilliant at everything? If Churchill hadn’t been prime minister during World War Two, he would still be one of the most accomplished men of the past century. The great wartime leader won the Nobel Prize for...

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All About the Renaissance [Full Program]

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The Renaissance: Was it a Thing? - Crash Course World History #22