A brief timeline of important historical events in Europe and Italian art 1200-1600
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Images from top to bottom: detail, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise; detail, Piero della Francesca, Legend of the True Cross; detail, portraits of Cosimo de' Medici and Piero de' Medici, Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi.
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1200s
1204 Venetians sack Constantinople
1224 St. Francis receives the stigmata (wounds of Christ) at La Verna
1228 St. Francis canonized
1234 St. Dominic canonized
1260 Siena crushes Florence in the Battle of Montaperti
1266 Piazza San Marco in Venice is paved and enlarged
1299 Palazzo della Signoria begun in Florence
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1300s
1302 Giotto receives the commission for the Arena Chapel in Padua
1304 Destructive fire in Florence
1308 Dante begins the Divine Comedy
1308 Siena Cathedral commissions Duccio to paint the Maesta’
1308 Bardi and Peruzzi banks fail in Florence
1333 The Arno floods Florence
1338-9 Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Good and Bad Government, Palazzo Publico, Siena
1348 Plague strikes Italy with devastating results
1368 St. Catherine’s mystical marriage with Christ
1378 Uprising of the Ciompi, the Florentine wool workers
1397 Medici bank created in Florence
1400-1450
1400 Plague strikes Italy
1403-24 Lorenzo Ghiberti, North Door, Baptistery, Florence
1411-17 Donatello sculpts Saints Mark and George
1421 Ca’ D’Oro palace constructed in Venice
c. 1424 Masaccio and Masolino, Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence
1425 Florence, Venice and papacy war against Milan
1425-52 Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise, East doors, Baptistery, Florence
1426-7 Massacio’s Trinity, Santa Maria Novella, Florence
1427 Florence Catasto tax census
1431 Joan of Arc burned at the stake
1433 Medici exiled from Florence for one year
1435 Leon Alberti treatise On Painting
1436 Brunelleschi’s Dome completed in Florence
1438-45 Fra Angelico, frescoes in Monastery of S. Marco, Florence
1450-1500
1450s Piero della Francesca, Legend of the True Cross, S. Francesco, Arezzo
1452 Leonardo da Vinci is born
1454 Major Italian powers agree to boundaries with the Peace of Lodi which reduces internal warfare
1454 War of Roses in England
1456 Gutenberg Bible printed
c. 1459 Benozzo Gozzoli, Procession of the Magi, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi, Florence
1464 Cosimo de’ Medici died
1469 Lorenzo de' Medici "the Magnificent" assumes power in Tuscany
1475 Michelangelo is born
1482 Botticelli, Primavera
1484-6 Botticelli, Birth of Venus
1490s First booked printed in Italy
1492 Columbus lands in the Indies
1492 Lorenzo the Magnificent dies
1494 Medici expelled from Florence
1494 Luca Pacioli codifies double entry bookkeeping system
1495-8 Leonardo da Vinci, Last Supper
1497 Florentine fundamentalist religious leader Savonarola’s “Bonfire of the Vanities.” He seizes power from the Medici and is burned at the stake one year later.
1500s
1501 Amerigo Vespucci sails to South America
1501-4 Michelangelo, David
1503 Leonardo da Vinci, Mona Lisa
1506 New St. Peter’s breaks ground in Rome
1507 Giorgione, Sleeping Venus
1508 Michelangelo begins Sistine ceiling frescoes
1509 Henry VIII becomes King of England
1510-11 Raphael, Stanza della Segnature, Rome
1512 Copernicus publishes On the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres with the sun as the center of the solar system
1516-18 Titian, Assumption of the Virgin
1517 Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses for church reform
1520 Martin Luther is excommunicated
1520 Artist Raphael Sanzio dies
1527 Holy Roman Emperor Charles V attacks Rome, known as the Sack of Rome
1536-41 Michelangelo, Last Judgement
1543 Copernicus published astronomical model of planets rotating around the sun
1559 Michelangelo, Laurentian Library staircase
1564 Michelangelo dies
1565 Foundation of St. Augustine, Florida
1596 Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
