John Gagné

A new history of how one of the Renaissance's pre-eminent cities lost its independence in the Italian Wars. In 1499, the Duchy of Milan had known independence for one hundred years. But the turn of the sixteenth century saw the city battered by the Italian Wars. As the major powers of Europe battled for supremacy, Milan, viewed by contemporaries as...

While preparing for an event at the University of Sydney in 2017, a librarian turned to the back page of the library’s 1497 copy of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy and made a curious discovery. In red chalk was a drawing of a woman and baby, and an inscription in Italian: "On the day of 17th September, Giorgione of Castelfranco, a...