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Contents: political eventsexploration, colonization commerce religion education art architecture, real estate |
Venetian forces capture the Ottoman port of Smyrna under the leadership of Admiral Pietro Mocenigo, who will be elected doge in 1474.
Scotland acquires the Orkney and Shetland islands from Norway.
Portuguese explorers continue to flourish. Fernando Po discovers islands off the coast of Africa that will bear his name. Lopo Goncalves crosses the equator; Ruy de Sequeira reaches latitude 2° south.
The Italian bank Monte dei Paschi opens at Siena to serve agricultural cooperatives whose members insure each other against losses when crops are good in some areas and poor in others because of adverse weather conditions. Clerical groups elsewhere in Tuscany have set up monti (mounds [of money]) de pieta (for pity, or charity), and the Monte dei Paschi is originally another monte de pieta, established by Siena's council of magistrates on the Piazza Salimbeni with capital derived from taxes paid both in cash and produce by local farmers, butchers, and even clergymen. Accepting deposits and making loans, the bank will give merchants and local businesses access to credit at low interest rates, help to spur a growth in the economy of Europe, and continue for more than 5 centuries, becoming one of Italy's largest banks and one of the 100 largest in the world (see 1484).
Muscovy returns to the Roman Church through the marriage of the grand duke Ivan III to Zoë (Sophia) Palaeologa, niece of Constantinople's last Greek emperor Constantine XI Palaeologus. Zoë's father, Thomas, is despot of the Morea, Pope Sixtus IV has arranged the marriage, later Russian rulers will use it as the basis of their claim to be the protectors of Orthodox Christianity. Ivan adapts the Byzantine crest of the double-headed eagle, he will establish a Byzantine autocracy in Russia, and he will take the title czar (caesar) (see 1479).
A Franciscan commissioner reports that many nuns are living "unreligious and unbridled" lives.
The University of Munich has its beginnings in a school founded at Ingolstadt by Ludwig the Rich, duke of Bavaria, who models it on the University of Vienna (see 1826).
Painting: The Annunciation by Florentine painter Leonardo da Vinci, who was born out of wedlock 20 years ago at Vinci to a peasant girl, having been fathered by a prominent local notary who has taken the youth to Florence and apprenticed him to the master Andrea del Verrocchio (Andrea di Michele di Francesco Clone), 37.
Sculpture: Tomb of Giovanni and Piero de' Medici by sculptor-painter Andrea del Verrocchio.
Mantua's Church of San Andrea is completed to designs by Leon Battista Alberti.
Humanist and architect Leon Battista Alberti dies at Rome April 25 at age 68, having made himself what many will regard as the prototypical Renaissance "universal" man. He is buried at Florence's Franciscan Church of Santa Croce.
The grand duke of Muscovy Ivan III will use Italian architects brought in by his wife, Zoë, to rebuild Moscow's grand ducal palace, the Kremlin.
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