Renaissance

Robert Hole examines the often misunderstood careers of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, whose power in Renaissance Florence was wielded with great subtlety and skill.

The social, sexual and demonic power of women was an important theme in the popular print of Germany and the Low Countries in the 16th century, as Julia Nurse shows.

Renaissance Venetians developed a sophisticated technology for keeping the city’s vital waterways free from silt and in the process, as Joseph Black explains, created a unique landscape that inspired travellers and painters.

Richard Hodges wanders through the medieval village of Rocca in Tuscany.

Lois Banner looks at coded messages of gender, sexuality and domination that preceded baggy trousers.

Luke Syson examines how artifice, art and political calculation combined to produce medal portraits by Sperandio of Mantua for two of Renaissance Italy's "warhorses", Giovanni Bentivoglio and Federico da Montelfeltro.

David Abulafia reassesses the life and motives of a notorious ruler and the complex web of Renaissance diplomacy involving him which led up to the Italian wars.

A ruler in transition - Howell Lloyd looks at the icons of power that masked the face of French kingship around 1500.

William Sessions on the connections of the charismatic courtier-poet who in a short and ill-fated life bridged the aristocratic Renaissance cultures of the Continent and the lifestyle of Henry VIII's court.

The murder of two French envoys on the river Po in the summer of 1541 not only provoked a diplomatic whodunnit round the courts of Europe, but also throws light on attitudes to diplomacy in the Renaissance world. Linda and Marsha Frey tell the story and its implications.