Bay Area Renaissance Festival in Tampa Florida, 2011

Reasons for Re-Enacting at the Renaissance Faire

Why do we love donning period costumes and re-enacting our history through mock battles, pioneer villages, and Renaissance Faires?
Beata Beatrix by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, ca 1864-70.

Becoming Beatrice

Dante adored her so much that he cast her as his guide in the Divine Comedy. But who was Beatrice Portinari?
Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint John the Baptist

How Renaissance Art Found Its Way to American Museums

We take for granted the Titians and Botticellis that hang in galleries across the United States, little aware of the appetites and inclinations of those who acquired them.
An image from Costume book of Matthaus Schwarz from Augsburg, 1520 - 1560

The Art of Renaissance Clothes

While Spanish Catholicism and reformatory Protestantism favored black clothing, much of the Renaissance happened in an explosion of color.
Giovanni da Udine, detail of border surrounding Raphael’s Cupid and Psyche, Villa Farnesina, Rome.

Fruit and Veg: The Sexual Metaphors of the Renaissance

Using peach and eggplant emojis as shorthand for sex may seem like a new thing, but Renaissance painters were experts at using produce to imply intercourse.
Leonardo da Vinci

The Destructive Myth of the Universal Genius

Excusing bad behavior from actors viewed as exceptional has led to supremely destructive moments in history. How'd we get from da Vinci to Hitler?
Idealized Portrait of a Woman (allegedly Simonetta Vespucci) by Sandro Botticelli

The Renaissance Lets Its Hair Down

The notion that everybody was going to be hairless in Heaven may not have sat well with Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli.
An anatomical machine of Prince Raimondo di Sangro

The Anatomical Machines of Naples’ Alchemist Prince

Rumor had it that these machines were once the Prince’s servants, whom he murdered and transformed into anatomical displays. Scholars showed otherwise.
Lansquenets - mercenary soldiers under emperor Maximilian I, c. 1600. Lithograph, published in 1887.

Chivalric Romance, Meet Gunpowder Reality

The manly knight wouldn't have lasted a day in sixteenth-century combat. So why was he so popular as a literary figure at the time?
Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Schreibzeug_(Nürnberg).jpg

How Renaissance Artisans Turned Live Animals into Silver

Lifecasting was the renaissance art of making sculptures using molds taken from real-life plants and animals.