WThe Bartolini Salimbeni Chapel is a chapel in the church of Santa Trinita, Florence, central Italy. Its decoration by Lorenzo Monaco, dating to the 1420s, are one of the few surviving examples of International Gothic frescoes in Italy. The chapel has kept other original elements, such as its altarpiece, an Annunciation, also by Monaco, and the railings.
WThe Battle of Anghiari was fought on 29 June 1440, between the forces of Milan and the League of some Italian states led by the Republic of Florence in the course of the Wars in Lombardy. The battle was a victory for the Florentines, securing Florentine domination of central Italy.
WThe Battle of Riccardina or Battle of Molinella, fought on July 25, 1467, in Molinella, was one of the most important battles of the 15th century in Italy.
WThe Battle of San Romano was fought on June 1, 1432, in San Romano, some 30 miles outside Florence, between the troops of Florence, commanded by Niccolò da Tolentino, and Siena, under Francesco Piccinino. The outcome is generally considered favourable to the Florentines, but in the Sienese chronicles it was considered a victory. As the 1430s began Florence had found itself in conflict with the rival city state of Lucca, and her allies, Siena and Milan.
WA bonfire of the vanities is a burning of objects condemned by authorities as occasions of sin. The phrase usually refers to the bonfire of 7 February 1497, when supporters of Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola collected and burned thousands of objects such as cosmetics, art, and books in Florence, Italy on the Shrove Tuesday festival.
WThe Council of Florence is the seventeenth ecumenical council recognized by the Catholic Church, held between 1431 and 1449. It was convoked as the Council of Basel by Pope Martin V shortly before his death in February 1431 and took place in the context of the Hussite wars in Bohemia and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. At stake was the greater conflict between the Conciliar movement and the principle of papal supremacy.
WThe Funerary Monument to Sir John Hawkwood is a fresco by Paolo Uccello, commemorating English condottiero John Hawkwood, commissioned in 1436 for Florence Cathedral. The fresco is an important example of art commemorating a soldier-for-hire who fought in the Italian peninsula and is a seminal work in the development of perspective.
WThe First Italian War, sometimes referred to as the Italian War of 1494 or Charles VIII's Italian War, was the opening phase of the Italian Wars. The war pitted Charles VIII of France, who had initial Milanese aid, against the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and an alliance of Italian powers led by Pope Alexander VI.
WThe Italic League or Most Holy League was an international agreement concluded in Venice on 30 August 1454, between the Papal States, the Republic of Venice, the Duchy of Milan, the Republic of Florence and the Kingdom of Naples, following the Treaty of Lodi a few months previously.
WThe Treaty of Lodi, or Peace of Lodi, was a peace agreement between Milan, Naples and Florence that was signed on 9 April 1454 at Lodi in Lombardy, on the banks of the Adda. It put an end to the Wars in Lombardy between expansive Milan, under Filippo Maria Visconti, and Venice, in the terraferma. They had produced a single decisive Venetian victory, at the Battle of Maclodio in 1427 in which the Venetian ally was Florence but had resulted in no lasting peace. After a further generation of intermittent seasonal campaigning, the Treaty of Lodi established permanent boundaries between Milanese and Venetian territories in Northern Italy, along the river Adda. Francesco Sforza was confirmed as the rightful duke of Milan. A principle of a balance of power in Northern Italy was established, one that excluded ambitions of other powers: the Republic of Genoa, and the princely families of Savoy, Gonzaga and Este.
WThe Medici giraffe was a giraffe presented to Lorenzo de' Medici in 1487 possibly by al-Ashraf Qaitbay, the Burji Sultan of Egypt, in an attempt to win the support of the Medici.
WMichelangelo had a complicated relationship with the Medici family, who were for most of his lifetime the effective rulers of his home city of Florence. The Medici rose to prominence as Florence's preeminent bankers. They amassed a sizable fortune some of which was used for patronage of the arts. Michelangelo's first contact with the Medici family began early as a talented teenage apprentice of the Florentine painter Domenico Ghirlandaio. Following his initial work for Lorenzo de' Medici, Michelangelo's interactions with the family continued for decades including the Medici papacies of Pope Leo X and Pope Clement VII.
WThe palleschi, also known as bigi, were partisans of the Medici family in Florence. The name derived by the Medici coat-of-arms, bearing six 'balls' (palle).
WThe Pazzi conspiracy was a plot by members of the Pazzi family and others to displace the Medici family as rulers of Renaissance Florence.
WThe Saint Fina Chapel is an Early Renaissance chapel in the right aisle of the Collegiate church of Santa Maria Assunta, located in San Gimignano, Tuscany, Italy. It was designed by Giuliano and Benedetto da Maiano in 1468 to enshrine the relics of Saint Fina. The side walls of the chapel are painted in fresco by Domenico Ghirlandaio with two scenes from her life, executed between 1477 and 1478.