The royal houses of Europe felt that it would be good for their sons to learn a manual trade. Artisans taught nobles to carve ivory on a lathe.

Despite the twelve volume herbarium she created, this seventeenth-century scientist earned little recognition. 

Renaissance-era anatomists taught people to “knowe thyself” by reading the books of bodies.

Poisonous green pigments laced with arsenic were once a common ingredient in book bindings, paints, wallpapers, and fabrics. Yikes.

Mother Superior Benedetta Carlini, a visionary nun of Renaissance Italy, was accused of heresy and “female sodomy.”

Michelangelo, perhaps the greatest artist the world has produced, wasn't a child prodigy like Mozart. He learned on the job. So maybe there's still hope for the rest of us.

Buon fresco, perhaps the best-known kind of wall painting, is the result of a chemical reaction turning paint and wet plaster into a single, solid surface.

What tools would an alchemist use in the quest to transmute other elements into gold?

The role beards played in defining masculinity during the Renaissance.