All About History - All About the Renaissance.pdf

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THE
DA VINCI, SHAKESPEARE &
THE AGE OF EXPLORATION
CONTENTS
Of all the periods in history, the Renaissance has to
be one of the most exciting. It saw the emergence of
a new breed of art and literature, but the discovery of
the New World also gave birth to a battle of conquest
between nations. In this digital edition, we reveal
the brighter and darker sides of this turbulent time.
THE RENAISSANCE
Alicea Francis
Deputy Editor
04
Da Vinci’s Dark
Secrets
26
The Tudor Empire
34
Tudor Musician
From his troubled childhood
to his scandalous love affairs
How Elizabeth I’s pirates stole
the Americas
12
Da Vinci’s Genius
Inventions
20
How To Build A
Flying Machine
Discover life in the royal court
10 of his greatest and most
bizarre inventions dismantled
36
Renaissance Prague
38
Columbus: Icon,
Explorer, Murderer
46
The Globe Theatre
Find out why painters, writers
and astronomers flocked here
04
26
Learn how Da Vinci created his
famous flying device
22
Inside Da Vinci’s
Studio
24
Renaissance
Florence
Was there a darker side to this
Italian explorer?
Take a sneak peek inside the
master’s Renaissance studio
See what a trip to the theatre
was like in Shakespeare’s time
48
Shakespeare: Rebel
With A Cause
Was there a hidden political
messsage in his plays?
Find out what life would have
been like in the 15th century
12
Be part of history
2
www.historyanswers.co.uk
/AllAboutHistory
@AboutHistoryMag
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48
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The Dark Secrets of
Today he is celebrated as one of the greatest minds of all time,
but Leonardo da Vinci had to battle his own share of demons to
produce his legendary work
Written by
Frances White
Illustrations by
The Art Agency
T
4
he name Da Vinci da Vinci conjures up
an array of images: a magnificent painter
who created some of the most celebrated
masterpieces of all time, an inventor who
questioned the very fundamentals of the
world he was living in, and a scientist who was
years ahead of his time. Da Vinci inspires as much
fascination and awe now as he did 500 years
ago, but the man himself remains an elusive and
mysterious figure. The superhuman legacy he left
behind is magnified by the fact that we don’t have
a face to put to the name – and every portrait of
him is littered with question marks. The man who
dreamed of humans taking flight was the same
man who filled the pages of his notebooks with
mundane interruptions, shopping lists, accounts
and recipes, and whose final written words were
not some great philosophical statement but rather
‘the soup is getting cold’. There is a collision
between the Da Vinci whose work fills the halls of
the Louvre and the scatterbrained man who sipped
on soup all those years ago. Just who exactly was
the man behind the
Mona Lisa?
From the day he entered the world, Da Vinci
faced adversity. Born in the Tuscan town of Vinci,
he was the son of the wealthy and respected
notary Messer Piero Fruosino di Antonio da Vinci.
However, his mother, Caterina, was a peasant and
Da Vinci was the result of a premarital liaison.
Raised for five years by his mother, the illegitimate
son then moved in with his father. Despite this
unconventional family upbringing, Vinci was an
idyllic setting for Da Vinci’s youth. The town was
surrounded by mountains, trees and crystalline
rivers, and he marvelled at the vast array of
animals that called it home. It is no wonder, then,
that this child would grow into a man fascinated by
the beauty and wonders of the natural world.
As an illegitimate son, Da Vinci was only granted
a basic, informal education in Latin, geometry
and mathematics, but already at this early stage
he was demonstrating the proficiency and skill
that would turn him into a legend. He took to
arithmetic like a duck to water, baffling his teacher
with the complex and intriguing questions he
posed. However, this skilled and brilliant child was
the same one who ‘was always setting himself to
learn a multitude of things, most of which were
shortly abandoned’. Time and time again the
young Da Vinci failed to live up to his promising
ability. Not yet 14, he was already struggling to
juggle a talented mind with a stream of boundless,
unstoppable curiosity – it is a balancing act he
would attempt to maintain his entire life.
Da Vinci was lucky. If he had been born the son
of a poorer, less respected man, he probably would
have languished in the town of Vinci his entire life,
The Dark Secrets of Da Vinci
“The world of Borgia, driven by war and
blood and revenge, even managed to
sweep up the gentle Da Vinci”
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