Encyclopedia of the Renaissance and the Reformation

century, and remained largely in the hands of minstrels and professional musicians. The main plucked string instruments were the ...

the first extended use of single-impression printing in Italy, publishing vast quantities of madrigals as well as motets, masses ...

while his English contemporaries experimented with idio- syncratic approaches to combining speculative theory with the realities ...

vided a codification, with emblematic illustrations, of con- temporary knowledge of classical mythology. Mythology not only prov ...

Nanni di Banco (Giovanni di Antonio di Banco) (c. 1384–1421) Italian sculptor A native of Florence, Nanni trained under his fath ...

southern Italy, formerly capital of the kingdom of Naples. Originally colonized by Greeks, Naples was in turn Roman, Byzantine, ...

work of medieval mathematicians, such as Nicolas ORESME, who had developed simple graphical techniques to describe the motion of ...

pass in the 13th century. In the wake of its popularization, the first known navigational book, Lo compasso di navi- gare, began ...

made them more useful to mariners, while QUADRANTS, cross-staffs, and BACKSTAFFSwere also invented or refined. The development o ...

of the learned easily transcended national boundaries. The major controversy connected with the creation of a body of humanistic ...

to suppress Dutch Calvinism and political freedoms. Mounting discontent led wealthy Dutch burghers and no- blemen to draft the C ...

tion Cassiopeia by Tycho BRAHE. Its observation among the so-called “fixed stars” challenged the Aristotelian view, already unde ...

LIBRARY. His own library room was decorated (1449) with portraits of pagan and Christian authors by Fra ANGELICO. Himself a scho ...

Northern Rebellion (1569–70) An uprising in the north of England led initially by Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk (1536–72). ...

Pietro Fortini (1500–62), Le cene by Anton Francesco GRAZZINI, the 75 novelle of Le piacevole notte (1550, 1553) by Gianfrancesc ...

1544 he worked in Spain but he died at Coimbra as pro- fessor of mathematics. Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar (c. 1490–c. 1557) Span ...

Obrecht, Jacob (c. 1450–1505) Flemish composer In 1476 Obrecht became master of the choristers at Utrecht, then (1479–84) held t ...

Oecolampadius, John (Johann Hussgen) (1482–1531) German theologian and reformer Oecolampadius was born at Weinsberg, at that tim ...

Renaissance scientists also made significant advances in the development of optical instruments. The period of the late 16th and ...

duced into mathematics for the first time the notion of fractional exponents. Orichovius See ORZECHOWSKI, STANISŁAW Orlando furi ...