Late Middle AgesThe Late Middle Ages, late medieval period, or Lower Middle Ages was the period of European history lasting from AD 1350 to 1500. The Late Middle Ages followed the High Middle Ages and preceded the onset of the early modern period (and in much of Europe, the Renaissance). Around 1350, centuries of prosperity and growth in Europe came to a halt. A series of famines and plagues, including the Great Famine of 1315–1317 and the Black Death, reduced the population to around half of what it had been before the calamities.
Early modern periodThe early modern period of modern history spans the period after the Late Middle Ages of the post-classical era (1400–1500) to the beginning of the Age of Revolutions (1800). Although the chronological limits of this period are open to debate, the timeframe is variously demarcated by historians as beginning with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Renaissance period in Europe and Timurid Central Asia, the end of the Crusades, the Age of Discovery (especially the voyages of Christopher Columbus beginning in 1492 but also Vasco da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India in 1498), and ending around the French Revolution in 1789, or Napoleon's rise to power.
Piero della FrancescaPiero della Francesca (ˌpjɛəroʊ_ˌdɛlə_frænˈtʃɛskə, USalso-_frɑːnˈ-, ˈpjɛːro della franˈtʃeska; ; 1415 – 12 October 1492) was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. To contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo.
ForlìForlì (fɔːrˈliː , forˈli; Furlè furˈlɛ; Forum Livii) is a comune (municipality) and city in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy, and is the capital of the province of Forlì-Cesena. It is the central city of Romagna. The city is situated along the Via Emilia, to the east of the Montone river, and is an important agricultural centre. The city hosts some of Italy's culturally and artistically significant landmarks; it is also notable as the birthplace of painters Melozzo da Forlì and Marco Palmezzano, humanist historian Flavio Biondo, physicians Geronimo Mercuriali and Giovanni Battista Morgagni.
Italian RenaissanceThe Italian Renaissance (Rinascimento rinaʃʃiˈmento) was a period in Italian history covering the 15th and 16th centuries. The period is known for the initial development of the broader Renaissance culture that spread across Western Europe and marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity. Proponents of a "long Renaissance" argue that it started around the year 1300 and lasted until about 1600. In some fields, a Proto-Renaissance, beginning around 1250, is typically accepted.
Battle of LegnanoThe Battle of Legnano was a battle between the imperial army of Frederick Barbarossa and the troops of the Lombard League on May 29, 1176, near the town of Legnano in present-day Lombardy, in Italy. Although the presence of the enemy nearby was already known to both sides, they suddenly met without having time to plan any strategy. The battle was crucial in the long war waged by the Holy Roman Empire in an attempt to assert its power over the municipalities of Northern Italy, which decided to set aside their mutual rivalries and join in a military alliance symbolically led by Pope Alexander III, the Lombard League.
DonatelloDonato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (1386 – 13 December 1466), better known as Donatello (,dQn@'tElou donaˈtɛllo), was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career.
European wars of religionThe European wars of religion were a series of wars waged in Europe during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries. Fought after the Protestant Reformation began in 1517, the wars disrupted the religious and political order in the Catholic countries of Europe, or Christendom. Other motives during the wars involved revolt, territorial ambitions and great power conflicts. By the end of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), Catholic France had allied with the Protestant forces against the Catholic Habsburg monarchy.
MercenaryA mercenary (sometimes shortened to merc) - also called a soldier of fortune, a hired gun, or, archaically, a sellsword - is a private individual who joins a military conflict for personal profit, is otherwise an outsider to the conflict, and is not a member of any other official military. Mercenaries fight for money or other forms of payment rather than for political interests. Beginning in the 20th century, mercenaries have increasingly come to be seen as less entitled to protection by rules of war than non-mercenaries.
Italian WarsThe Italian Wars, also known as the Habsburg–Valois Wars, were a series of conflicts fought between 1494 and 1559, mostly in the Italian peninsula, but later expanding into Flanders, the Rhineland and Mediterranean Sea. The primary belligerents were the Valois kings of France, and their Habsburg opponents in the Holy Roman Empire and Spain. At different points, various Italian states participated in the war, some on both sides, with limited involvement from England and the Ottoman Empire.
