Renaissance

1. [] - **Leonardo Da Vinci**- His birth name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci. He was an Italian Renaissance polymath. Leonardo was and is renowned primarily as a painter. **Among his works, the //Mona Lisa// is the most famous and most parodied portrait and //The Last Supper// the most reproduced religious painting of all time.** He was born in Vinci, Italy on the 15th of april 1452 and died in Amboise, France on the 2nd of May 1519 at the age of 67.

- **Michelangelo**- His birth name is Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. He was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. **Two of his best-known works, the //Pietà// and //David//, were sculpted before he turned thirty.** He was born in Tuscany, Italy on the 6th of March 1475 and died in Rome, Italy on 18th of February 1564 at the age of 88.

- **Dante** - His birthname is Durante degli Alighieri. He was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. **He is best known for the monumental epic poem Commedia, later named La divina commedia (Divine Comedy), considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature.** He was born in Florence, Italy on mid-May to mid-June of 1265 and died in Ravenna, Italy on the 14th of Sepetember 1321 at the age of 56.

- **Sir Thomas More** - He is known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More since 1935.He was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and was Lord Chancellor from October 1529 to 16 May 1532. **More sketched out his best known and most controversial work, //Utopia// (completed and published in 1516), a novel in Latin.** He was born in London on the 7th of February 1478 and died in London on the 6th of July 1535 at the age of 57. He was beatified by Pope Leo XIIIin Florence on 1886. His feast for catholic church is on the 22nd of June.

- **William Shakespeare -** He was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. **His surviving works, including some collaborations, consist of about 38 plays,154 sonnets, two long narrative poems, and several other poems.** His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. He wrote mainly tragedies until about 1608, including //Hamlet//, //King Lear//, //Othello//, and //Macbeth//, considered some of the finest works in the English language. He was baptised in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England on the 26th of April 1564 and died in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England on the 23rd of April 1616 at the age of 52.

- **Albrecht Durer -** He was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since. His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings. **His well-known works include the //Knight, Death, and the Devil// (1513), //Saint Jerome in his Study// (1514) and //Melencolia// (1514), which has been the subject of extensive analysis and interpretation.** He was born in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire on the 21st of May 1471 and died in Nuremberg, Holy Roman Empire on the 6th of April 1528 at the age of 56.

- **Miguel De Cervantes -** His birth name is Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. He was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, //Don Quixote//, considered the first modern European novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written. **His influence on the Spanish language has been so great that the language is often called //la lengua de Cervantes//("the language of Cervantes").** He was born in Alcalá de Henares, Castile on the 29th of September 1547 and died in Madrid, Castile on the 22nd of April 1616 at the age of 68.

- **Nicolaus Copernicus -** He was a Renaissance astronomer and the first person to formulate a comprehensive heliocentric cosmology which displaced the Earth from the centre of the universe. Among the great polymaths of the Renaissance, **Copernicus was a mathematician, astronomer, jurist with a doctorate in law, physician, quadrilingual polyglot, classics scholar, translator, artist, Catholic cleric, governor, diplomat and economist.** He was born in Poland on the 19th of February 1473 and died in Poland on the 24th of May 1543 at the age of 70.

=
- **Baldassare Castiglione -** He was an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier and a prominent Renaissance author. ** Castiglione's minor works are less known, yet still interestin g, including love sonnets and four Amorose canzoni ("Amorous Songs") about his Platonic love for Elisabetta Gonzaga, in the style of Francesco Petrarca and Pietro Bembo.** He was born near Casatico, which is near Mantua on the 6th of December 1478 and died in Toledo, Spain on 2nd of February 1529 at the age of 50.=====

- **Pieter Bruegel** - He was a Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker known for hislandscapes and peasant scenes (so called genre painting). **He is sometimes referred to as the "Peasant Bruegel" to distinguish him from other members of the Brueghel dynasty**. He was born in Belgium on 1525 and died in Belgium on the 9th of September 1569 at the age of 44.

- **Desiderius Eramus -** His Birth name is Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus. He was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian. **Erasmus was a classical scholar who wrote in a pure Latin style.** He was an early proponent of religious toleration, and enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists"; he has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists." He was born in Netherlands on the 28th of October 1466 and died in Basel, Old Swiss on the 12th of July 1536.

- **Andreas Vasalius -** He was a Flem ish anatomist,physician, and author of one of the most influential books on human anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (On the Structure of the Human Body). **Vesalius is often referred to as the founder of modern human anatomy.** He was born in Brussels, Netherlands on the 31st of December 1514 and died in Zakynthos on the 15th of October 1564 at the age of 49.