War of the Spanish Succession
Philip V of Spain Austria and France fight over Spain The War of the Spanish Succession was a war between Austria and France. They were fighting over which of them [...]
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08, 2017
Napoleon – European History
Napoleon in 1806 Right after the French Revolution, a lot of people in France were wondering, what sort of government did they really want? People wanted democracy, but on the other hand [...]
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08, 2017
Who was Velazquez? Spanish art history
Velazquez (self-portrait), ca. 1650 AD, when he was about fifty years old. Diego Velazquez was one of the best artists of the generation after Rubens. He was born in 1599, in [...]
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08, 2017
Who was Titian? Renaissance Art
Titian's self-portrait of himself in old age The Renaissance painter Titian was born about 1490 AD, near the Italian city of Venice. He was a little younger than other Renaissance artists. When [...]
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08, 2017
Leonardo da Vinci Biography
Th Leonardo da Vinci, artist and scientist - a self-portrait Leonardo was home-schooled The artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci was born near Florence, in Italy, in 1452 AD. His father was a [...]
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08, 2017
Francis of Assisi – Medieval Europe
Francis of Assisi gives his father back his clothes (Giotto, in Assisi) Who was Francis of Assisi? By 1200 AD, the Catholic Church was very powerful. Bishops and popes were often rich men. They cared more about [...]
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08, 2017
Thomas Aquinas – Dominican monk
Naples, with Mount Vesuvius in the background Like Ibn Rushd and Maimonides, Thomas Aquinas was a great thinke who tried to figure out the relationship between science and religion. But unlike Ibn Rushd [...]
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08, 2017
Petrarch – Late medieval Italy
A portrait of Petrarch Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca in Italian) was born in 1304 AD in Arezzo, in northern Italy. His father was a lawyer, and when Petrarch was a teenager his father made [...]
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08, 2017
The Clerk’s Tale – Chaucer – Canterbury Tales
Just like the Clerk's Tale: Clerks in the Manessa Codex (1300 AD) A story from Boccaccio Chaucer's Clerk's Tale is actually taken from one of Boccaccio's stories, and because of that [...]
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08, 2017
Venice in the Late Middle Ages
Bronze horses of St. Mark's, Venice In 1204 AD, Venice agreed to help European soldiers on the Fourth Crusade. They would use their great navy to get the Crusaders to Egypt. But in exchange, the Venetians got the [...]
