Henry Carter Hull

Text and photographs interweave biography and social history to provide an understanding of the historical setting of the Renaissance artists.

Explores the achievements of the Renaissance. Includes peel back see-through pages to look inside a Florentine town house, Columbus's ship the Santa Maria, St. Peter's in Rome, and a printer's workshop.

Examines the period of European history from around 1450 to about 1620.

Proposes that the key to the cultural, artistic, educational, and intellectual changes which blossomed in the Renaissance were made possible by the expansion of commerce, capital, and personal wealth.

"A novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de' Medici"-- Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna and Regio, Lucrezia...

Her mother died when she was twelve, and suddenly Artemisia Gentileschi had a stark choice: a life as a nun in a convent or a life grinding pigment for her father's paint. She chose paint. By the time she was seventeen, Artemisia did more than grind pigment. She was one of Rome's most talented painters, even if no one knew her name. But Rome in 1610 was a city where men took what they wanted from women, and in the aftermath of rape Artemisia faced...