Henry the Navigator was an infante of the Kingdom of Portugal and an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire. He was responsible for the early development of European exploration and maritime trade with other continents....

Mehmed II (1432-1481), nicknamed the conqueror, was the sultan of the Ottoman Empire a short time in 1444 to 1446, and from 1451 to 1481. Mehmed II brought an end to the Byzantine Empire by capturing Constantinople in 1453 (during the well-...

Sandro Botticelli was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterize less than a hundred years later in his Vita...

Ferdinand II, called the Catholic, was in his own right the King of Sicily from 1468 and King of Aragon from 1479. As a consequence of his marriage to Isabella I, he was King of Castile jure uxoris as Ferdinand V from 1474 until her death i...

America is named after Amerigo Vespucci, who was the first European to suggest that the Americas were not the East Indies. Amerigo Vespucci was an Italian merchant and cartographer who voyaged to and wrote about the Americas. His explorator...

John II, the Perfect Prince, was the thirteenth king of Portugal and the Algarves. He is known for re-establishing the power of the Portuguese throne, reinvigorating its economy, and renewing its exploration of Africa and the Orient. John I...

Maximilian was born in Vienna as the son of the Emperor Frederick III and Eleanore of Portugal. He married (1477-1482) the heiress of Burgundy, Mary, the only daughter of Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Through this marriage, Maximilian...

Adrian VI served as Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and its Eastern Churches in communion with the Holy See from 1522-1523 until his death. He was born under very modest circumstances in the city of Utrecht, which at that time was capi...

Jakob Fugger of the Lily also known as Jakob Fugger the Rich or sometimes Jakob II. Fugger was a major merchant, mining entrepreneur and banker of Europe between ca. 1495-1525. He was a descendant of the Fugger merchant family located in th...

Fra Bartolomeo or Bartolommeo OP , also known as Bartolommeo di Pagholo, Bartolommeo di S. Marco, and his actual name Baccio della Porta, was an Italian Renaissance painter of religious subjects. He spent all his career in Florence until hi...

James IV, King of Scotland (1488–1513), son and successor of James III. He was an able and popular king, and his reign was one of stability and progress for Scotland. After suppressing an insurrection of discontented nobles early in his rei...

Michelangelo Buonarroti was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, poet, and engineer of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatil...

Raphael was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form and ease of composition and for its visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo...

Ferdinand I was an Austrian monarch from the House of Habsburg. He was first the Archduke of Austria from 1521-1564. After the death of Louis II, Ferdinand ruled as King of Bohemia and Hungary (1526–1564). After his brother Charles V abdica...

Gerardus Mercator, Flemish cartographer. He received a master's degree in 1532 from the University of Louvain (Belgium), where he settled. By 24 he was a skilled engraver, calligrapher, and scientific-instrument maker. He and his colleagues...