Painting of Venus by Botticelli

Renaissance

The Renaissance: not such a golden age?.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

Michelangelo: the Renaissance polymath who transformed Western art

A vessel at sea comes across the mythical ghost ship The Flying Dutchman

General History

Seven of history's most disturbing ghost ship stories that will haunt your dreams

Video podcastMichelangelo: life of the week.

Michelangelo: life of the week.

Gulbadan Begum: princess, explorer, author.

The Grand Tour: everything you wanted to know.

Portrait of Catherine de Medici, also known as the Serpent Queen

Catherine de MediciThe life, death and legacy of the 'Serpent Queen'

Italian Galileo Galilei.

How Galileo Galilei took on the church and changed the universe

Galileo: life of the week.

The Magus: enlightened magician or Renaissance charlatan?.

Painting

The Renaissance: an explosion of creativity.

Renaissance eugenics.

Renaissance beauty regimes.

A mermaid combing her hair

General Early Modern

Tails from the deep: separating the real folklore of mermaids from Disney stories

Baptism of Christ c1567, by Juan Fernandez de Navarrete

The “silent study of art”: the deaf artists of the Renaissance.

A painting of Lisbon depicts conspicuous displays of Portuguese imperial wealth and power – including enslaved African people

How slavery thrived in Renaissance Europe

The Arnolfini portrait painting – oil on wood – appears to depict a wealthy couple holding hands in a domestic setting, the bed perhaps indicating that they are in a bedchamber

What great paintings sayThe Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, 1434.

What if...The Ottomans had won at Lepanto in 1571?.

Domenico Fetti painting illustrating a melancholic woman in the early 17th century

The Anatomy of Melancholy: how Robert Burton helped shape our understanding of the mind.

A portrait of a member of the Borgias family

The Borgias: everything you wanted to know.

Bust of Lorenzo de' Medici

Lorenzo the MagnificentThe astounding life of the ‘delightful tyrant’ of Renaissance Florence

'The Journey of the Magi' by Benozzo Gozzoli, commissioned by Piero the Gouty for the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. It features his son Lorenzo, who would become known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, as one of the three kings

“They were on a level with today’s billionaires” – your guide to the Medici: bankers to the Pope, rulers of Florence, patrons of the Renaissance

A group of men observe a body lying on a table.

Early-modern cannibal doctors: why mummified corpse was considered medicine.

From left to right: Queen Isabella of Castile; French regent Anne de Beaujeu; and Catherine of Aragon. (Photos by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/DeAgostini/Imagno/Getty Images)

Game of Queens: when women ruled Renaissance Europe

Two garden gnomes on grass

A brief history of garden gnomes

Leonardo da Vinci’s private life.

Leonardo: bringing Da Vinci to the screen.

Aidan Turner as Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo: the real history behind the new Renaissance drama

Drawing of an old and young man, possibly Salai, by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci’s private relationships: what's known?