1400–1600 · Europe · Science
Artists, scholars and patrons revisited classical learning while experimenting with perspective, anatomy, philology and new forms of civic culture.
Atlas dossier · Renaissance & ReformationFree device narration · synchronized English captions · transcript available
Why it matters
Artists, scholars and patrons revisited classical learning while experimenting with perspective, anatomy, philology and new forms of civic culture.
Petrarch · Leonardo da Vinci · Erasmus · artists, printers and patrons
The Renaissance changed education, art, political thought and the circulation of knowledge, while depending on wider Mediterranean exchange.
Interpretation note
This dossier distinguishes the event’s basic chronology from later arguments about meaning, responsibility and legacy. When comparing religious, national, Indigenous or scholarly interpretations, consult the primary and institutional sources above alongside peer-reviewed historical work.
Elsewhere in the world
1450–1900 · GlobalAtlantic slave trade and resistanceEuropean and American traders forcibly transported millions of Africans across the Atlantic into systems of plantation slavery; African and diasporic resistance never ceased.
1347–1353 · GlobalBlack DeathPlague moved through Eurasian and North African networks, killing an immense share of local populations.
1325–1532 · AmericasMexica and Inca worlds before conquestThe Mexica and Inca built far-reaching political worlds with sophisticated agriculture, engineering, tribute systems, trade, religious life and knowledge traditions before Spanish invasions ruptured them in the sixteenth century.