Painting of Venus by Botticelli

Renaissance

A vessel at sea comes across the mythical ghost ship The Flying Dutchman

General History

Seven of history's most disturbing ghost ship stories that will haunt your dreams

Video podcastMichelangelo: life of the week. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Michelangelo: life of the week. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Gulbadan Begum: princess, explorer, author. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Grand Tour: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Portrait of Catherine de Medici, also known as the Serpent Queen

Catherine de MediciThe life, death and legacy of the 'Serpent Queen'

Italian Galileo Galilei.

How Galileo Galilei took on the church and changed the universe

Galileo: life of the week. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

The Magus: enlightened magician or Renaissance charlatan?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Painting

The Renaissance: an explosion of creativity. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Renaissance eugenics. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Renaissance beauty regimes. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A mermaid combing her hair

General Early Modern

Tails from the deep: separating the real folklore of mermaids from Disney stories

Baptism of Christ c1567, by Juan Fernandez de Navarrete

The “silent study of art”: the deaf artists of the Renaissance. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A painting of Lisbon depicts conspicuous displays of Portuguese imperial wealth and power – including enslaved African people

How slavery thrived in Renaissance Europe

The Arnolfini portrait painting – oil on wood – appears to depict a wealthy couple holding hands in a domestic setting, the bed perhaps indicating that they are in a bedchamber

What great paintings sayThe Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck, 1434. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

What if...The Ottomans had won at Lepanto in 1571?. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Domenico Fetti painting illustrating a melancholic woman in the early 17th century

The Anatomy of Melancholy: how Robert Burton helped shape our understanding of the mind. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

A portrait of a member of the Borgias family

The Borgias: everything you wanted to know. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Bust of Lorenzo de' Medici

Lorenzo the MagnificentThe astounding life of the ‘delightful tyrant’ of Renaissance Florence

'The Journey of the Magi' by Benozzo Gozzoli, commissioned by Piero the Gouty for the Palazzo Medici Riccardi. It features his son Lorenzo, who would become known as Lorenzo the Magnificent, as one of the three kings

“They were on a level with today’s billionaires” – your guide to the Medici: bankers to the Pope, rulers of Florence, patrons of the Renaissance

A group of men observe a body lying on a table.

Early-modern cannibal doctors: why mummified corpse was considered medicine

From left to right: Queen Isabella of Castile; French regent Anne de Beaujeu; and Catherine of Aragon. (Photos by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images/DeAgostini/Imagno/Getty Images)

Game of Queens: when women ruled Renaissance Europe

Two garden gnomes on grass

A brief history of garden gnomes

Leonardo da Vinci’s private life. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Leonardo: bringing Da Vinci to the screen. This is a premium piece of content available to subscribed users.

Aidan Turner as Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo: the real history behind the new Renaissance drama

Drawing of an old and young man, possibly Salai, by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci’s private relationships: what's known?

Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo

Leonardo & Michelangelo: rivalry and inspiration

Leonardo da Vinci’s full-scale cartoon drawing of Isabella d’Este

Leonardo da Vinci's patrons: the people who paid for the masterpieces