Renaissance and Reformation

Aachen, Hans von To Agrippa von Nettesheim, (Henry) Cornelius (Renaissance and Reformation)

Aachen, Hans von (1552-1615) German painter Despite his name, von Aachen was born at Cologne. Like Bartholomaus spranger, whom he later joined in Prague, and other northern artists of his time, von Aachen spent a long period as a young man in Italy, modifying his own German style with an Italian grace and roundedness of […]

Ailly, Pierre d’ To Alesius, Alexander (Alexander Alane, Alexander Ales(s)) (Renaissance and Reformation)

Ailly, Pierre d’ (1350-1420) French geographer and theologian Born at Compiegne and educated at the university of Paris, d’Ailly pursued a clerical career, rising in 1411 to the rank of cardinal. Caught up in the great schism, he broke with Pope Benedict XIII in 1408 and argued in his Tractatus super reformatione ecclesiae (1416) for […]

Alessi, Galeazzo To Anatomy (Renaissance and Reformation)

Alessi, Galeazzo (1512-1572) Italian architect Alessi was born in Perugia and later (1568) designed the principal doorway for the cathedral there. He visited Rome in the late 1530s and his style was formed by his enthusiasm for classical architecture, especially as mediated by michelangelo. His most distinguished work combines the dignity of the classical orders […]

Andrea del Castagno To Antiquarianism (Renaissance and Reformation)

Andrea del Castagno (1417/19-1457) Italian painter Castagno, so named after his birthplace, was an important innovator like masaccio before him; he introduced a rugged vitality into Florentine painting. Most of Castagno’s few surviving paintings and documented lost works are frescoes, including his earliest known commission, the effigies of hanged criminals for the facade of the […]

Antiquaries, Society of To Arcadelt, Jacques (Renaissance and Reformation)

Antiquaries, Society of A British society dedicated to the preservation of the national historic heritage. In its original form it was founded in 1572 by Archbishop Matthew parker with the collaboration of William cam-den and other scholars. Its early proceedings were preserved among Sir Robert cotton’s papers and were published in 1720 as A Collection […]

Arcadia To Arithmetic (Renaissance and Reformation)

Arcadia The remote, mountainous area of southern Greece to which Virgil referred in his Eclogues and which thus passed into literary convention as the setting for the idealized world of the pastoral. When writers revived the pastoral as a literary form in the Renaissance, it was the idealized landscape of Arcadia, not the reality, which […]

Armillary spheres To Astronomy (Renaissance and Reformation)

Armillary spheres Astronomical instruments consisting of linked adjustable rings (the name derives from Latin armilla: bracelet) representing the circles of the celestial sphere such as the ecliptic and equator. A sphere in the center represents the earth. Used by Hipparchus (second century bce) they were described by Ptolemy in his Almagest (see ptolemaic system) and […]

Aubigne, Theodore d’Agrippa d’ To Balboa, Vasco Nunes de (Renaissance and Reformation)

Aubigne, Theodore d’Agrippa d’ (1551-1630) French poet, soldier, polemicist, and historian of his own times After a studious youth at several European universities, Aubigne, an ardent Protestant, joined the Huguenot forces and served throughout the French religious wars, latterly as master of horse to Henry of Navarre. After Henry’s accession (1589) as henry iv and […]

Baldovinetti, Alesso To Barros, Joao de (Renaissance and Reformation)

Baldovinetti, Alesso (c. 1426-1499) Italian painter and mosaicist His work, which was mainly in and around Florence, is documented by his diary recording his commissions. Some of his paintings, such as the Madonna and Child in the Louvre, Paris, and the damaged Nativity fresco in SS. Annunziata, Florence, have attractive, if unsophisticated, landscape views of […]

Barthelemy, Nicolas To Bembine Table (Renaissance and Reformation)

Barthelemy, Nicolas (1478-c. 1540) French Benedictine monk and writer Barthelemy was born at Loches, near Tours, and became prior of Freteval, near Vendome, and later of Notre-Dame-de-Bonne-Nouvelle, Orleans. He studied law at Orleans university and was a friend of bude. Among his poems in Latin were Epigrammata et eydillia (1532), and his drama Christus Xylonicus […]

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