The Great Minds of the Renaissance
The Renaissance was a time of rebirth and change, a time where cultures collided and advanced in a giant cooking pot of creativity and intelligence. So naturally, there are some people who truly helped earn the Renaissance this title. This page includes the links for everyone's favorite Renaissance people!
Also: Concerning our little Shakespeare dude at the top of the page, many of the people featured here lived before Shakespeare's time, so they were never "buddies" with him. Just try to ignore him!
Henry the 8th, King of England, ruled just before the Renaissance hit England, and is our earliest character on the page. He's arguably one of the most important rulers of England, having made the first Protestant church and made a plethora of different changes that shaped England forever. But he wasn't the nicest guy, as you'll see in just a moment. And yes, he did have six wives!
Elizabeth was the daughter of Henry the Eighth and his second wife, Ann Boleyn. But unfortunately for her, Henry wanted a son, so Elizabeth was declared illegitimate. That was a real shame, because when Elizabeth finally rose to the throne, she become one of the greatest leaders England's ever had! Learn about the life and exploits of Queen Elizabeth here.
Here he is, the True Renaissance Man. Leonardo da Vinci was one of the most fantastic men of all time, right up there with Albert Einstein. He was a painter, an inventor, a scholar, and an all-around curious man. He was clever, even doing things like writing his notes backwards so nobody could steal his ideas! If you want his full story, then you've come to the right place.
Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo was also a Renaissance man. He was a sculptor, a painter, an architect, and more. He painted the Sistine Chapel, a huge and priceless piece of art that took nearly ten years to fully complete. So if you're complaining that your teacher is making you do at least twenty hours of work on some random Renaissance project (ahem), then be glad that you don't have to do as much as the great Michelangelo!
Copernicus was a Renaissance astronomer, and was also the first person to put up the revolutionary heliocentric theory, which stated that the Sun did not revolve around the Earth, but the other way around. Unfortunately, he had to put forth his theory secretly because he knew he would get in big trouble for it. Check out all of his other feats, as well as info about his life, on this page!
Succceeding Nicolaus Copernicus as a legendary Renaissance astronomer is Galileo Galilei, who is mostly just known as just plain Galileo. He was fascinated with physics, and did a lot of work as a physicist and scientist in his days. Not to mention his very famous invention, the modern telescope! Without him, we wouldn't know about most of the planets and stars we know about today. And brave Galileo also greatly supported Copernicus' theory of heliocentricism, and that nearly got him killed!
Shakespeare: The most famous writer and poet the world has ever known. He's written comedies, trajedies, histories and sonnets, the whole deal. His plays have been replicated uncountable times, in every imaginable country and in every written language. He is the definitive writer of his time... and ours.
