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Home / Periods / Renaissance & Early Modern Europe / Italian Renaissance

Phase

Italian Renaissance

c. 1350–1600 CE

The Italian Renaissance developed through cities such as Florence, Venice, Milan, Ferrara and Rome. Wealthy families, republics, popes and princes sponsored art, architecture, scholarship and political display. The same world also produced conspiracy, factional violence, mercenary warfare and intense competition for prestige.

Its significance lies in the combination of beauty and danger. Artists and writers depended on patrons whose power could vanish quickly, while city politics could turn friendship into exile. Sarah Dunant, Dorothy Dunnett, Jean Plaidy and many other writers use Renaissance Italy for novels of art, ambition, poison, banking and court survival.

The period also connects naturally to Hilary Mantel's Tudor world and to wider European series about Florence, Venice, France, Spain and the papacy. The period brought together art, banking, dynastic marriage, religious upheaval, court politics and intellectual change.

Related people for Italian Renaissance

Alessandro de’ Medici1510–1537 Alexander VI1431–1503 Bianca Cappello1548–1587 Catherine de’ Medici1519–1589 Cesare Borgia1475–1507 Christopher Columbus1451–1506 Cosimo I de’ Medici1519–1574 David of Trebizond1408–1463 Diane de Poitiers1499–1566 Ferdinand II of Aragon1452–1516 Ferdinando I de’ Medici1549–1609 Francesco I de’ Medici1541–1587 Francis II of France1544–1560 Girolamo Savonarola1452–1498 Giulia Farnese1474–1524 Henry III of France1551–1589 Henry II of France1519–1559 Henry IV of France1553–1610 Henry VII1457–1509 Henry VIII1491–1547 Isabella I of Castile1451–1504 Leonardo da Vinci1452–1519 Lucrezia Borgia1480–1519 Mehmed II1432–1481 Muhammad XII of Granada1459–1533 Niccolò Machiavelli1469–1527 Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick1428–1471 Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury1563–1612 Roderigo Lópezc. 1525–1594

Series

Series about Italian Renaissance (1 series)

Children of Earth and Sky in Order

by Guy Gavriel Kay 3 books 4.3(28,090)

The Children of Earth and Sky sequence moves through a shared secondary world shaped by the political and religious pressures of the Renaissance Mediterranean. Its merchant republics, rival faiths, mercenary captains, corsair fleets and expanding eastern empire echo fifteenth-century Italy, Venice, the Adriatic borderlands and the Ottoman advance…

Books

30 Best Novels About the Italian Renaissance