built the Sala del Consiglio (now Sala dei Cinquecento) of
the Palazzo Vecchio to accommodate the council insti-
tuted by SAVONAROLAon the lines of the Venetian MAGGIOR
CONSIGLIO. He carried on BENEDETTO DA MAIANO’s work
on the Palazzo Strozzi, probably designed the Palazzo
Guadagni, and also executed Giuliano da SANGALLO’s d e -
sign for the vestibule and sacristy of San Spirito. The
church of San Salvatore al Monte, near Florence, which
Cronaca built at the end of his life, is a model of classical
simplicity and restraint, and was praised by Michelangelo.
cross-staffs See BACKSTAFFS
cryptography The science of devising and deciphering
codes and ciphers. Simple ciphers were well known in an-
tiquity. Like the basic Caesar alphabet, in which plaintext
letters were replaced by letters three places further along
the alphabet, they were invariably simple substitution ci-
phers. Such methods were readily employed in the Re-
naissance, for example, in the correspondence of the
Avignon popes during the GREAT SCHISM. Before long,
however, skilled cryptographers such as François VIÈTE
could be found attached to most courts, happily reading
the encoded correspondence of their enemies.
The obvious step of complicating the cipher by using
different alphabets to encode different parts of the plain-
text was first proposed by ALBERTI. Later generations of
Renaissance cryptographers were left to work out pre-
cisely how polyalphabetic substitution could be deployed
in practice. Alberti himself attempted to introduce polyal-
phabeticity by the use of two cipher discs, the setting of
which could be changed for the encoding of each letter. A
further step was taken by TRITHEMIUSin his Polygraphia
(1518), in which he replaced the cipher discs of Alberti
with the more familiar and useful rectangular tableau of
alphabets. Precisely how such complicated ciphers could
be made to operate with easily remembered and easily
changed keys was shown by Giovanni Belaso in La cifra
(1553).
The various innovations of Alberti, Trithemius, and
Belaso were assembled and presented in a more conve-
nient form by Blaise de VIGENÈREin his Traicté des chiffres
(1586). To their work he added the important notion of an
autokey which, by using the plaintext as the key, endowed
such ciphers with considerable security. So successful did
Vigenère ciphers prove to be that they remained, when
carefully constructed, indecipherable until the work of the
great cryptoanalyst Friedrich Kasiski in the mid-19th cen-
tury.
Cueva, Juan de la (1543–1610) Spanish dramatist
On returning from Mexico (1577), where he had gone
with his brother in 1574, Cueva wrote plays for the pub-
lic theater in his native Seville. These were produced be-
tween 1579 and 1581, after which he devoted himself to
verse and other writing, none of which is significant. Ex-
emplar poético, a verse treatise on poetics, appeared in- La Conquista de Bética (1603), his attempt at epic on
a patriotic subject, has more historical than literary inter-
est. His 14 surviving verse plays, 10 comedies and four
tragedies, were published as Comedias y tragedias (1584).
Three are based on classical subjects (for example, a
tragedy on the death of Virginia, taken from the Roman
historian Livy) and three on fictional sources. His impor-
tant contribution, however, was introducing material
drawn from Spanish historical chronicles and ballads. Ex-
amples of these are La muerte del rey Don Sancho (The
Death of King Sancho) and Los siete infantes de Lara (The
Seven Infantes of Lara). His allegorical play, El infamador,
has similarities to the Don Juan legend and influenced
TIRSO DE MOLINA’s Burlador de Sevilla (1630). Cueva’s
mediocre work is rhetorical, Senecan, and scarcely dra-
matic at all, but in adapting national themes for the stage
he anticipated the truly Spanish drama of great play-
wrights of the Golden Age like Lope de VEGA.
culteranismo See GÓNGORA Y ARGOTE, LUIS DECupid (Amor) The god of love, usually depicted as a
young winged boy with bow and arrows and flaming
torches. He is the Roman equivalent of the Greek Eros,
and is generally shown in the company of his mother
VENUS(Greek Aphrodite). Another characteristic feature
is that Cupid is often depicted as blind, or at least blind-
folded, as in Botticelli’s PRIMAVERA and TITIAN’s The
Blindfolding of Amor (Galleria Borghese, Rome); the Re-
naissance Neoplatonic interpretation of the blindness of
love rejected the original notion that it symbolized un-
comprehending animal passion and exalted it into a sym-
bol of love’s superiority to both body and intellect. Cupid
also features in two other scenes that were vehicles of
Neoplatonic allegories: Mercury teaching Cupid to read
(an allegory of intellectual love), exemplified by CORREG-
GIO’s picture of the subject in the National Gallery, Lon-
don, and the love of Cupid and PSYCHE(the desire of the
soul for divine love and their eventual union).
Following the Hellenistic tradition that there was not
just one Eros, but a number of Erotes, Renaissance
painters often depict several Cupids attending on Venus.
These have a decorative function indistinguishable from
that of the putti (Italian: young boys) found in both sacred
and profane art.Cusanus, Nicholas (Nicholas of Cusa, Nicholas of
Kues) (1401–1464) German philosopher and theologian
Born at Kues on the Moselle, the son of a poor family, he
entered the service of Ulrich, Count of Manderscheid,
who supported him first while he studied at Deventer with
the Brethren of the COMMON LIFE, then at Padua where he
became a doctor of law (1423). He entered the ChurchCCuussaannuuss,, NNiicchhoollaass 1 12299