Renaissance

Cesare Borgia, Machiavelli’s model for his Renaissance prince and alleged inspiration for Leonardo’s face of Christ

Cesare Borgia, commonly known as the Duke of Valentinois, gained his state through his father’s fortune, and lost it with…

Portrait of Cesare Borgia possibly based on a period original by Bartolomeo Veneto/Image: public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Giovanni della Porta, the Renaissance scholar who encrypted messages inside eggs to fool the Inquisition

Giovanni Battista della Porta was born in November 1535 in Vico Equense, a municipality of the Kingdom of Naples that…

Portrait of Della Porta / Image: public domain

Simonetta Vespucci, the muse who was a model both for Botticelli and many others, died at the age of 23

If we had to choose the most famous paintings in history, there would certainly be one from Botticelli and, most…

Simonetta in The Birth of Venus/Image: Public Domain in Wikimedia Commons