By using over 2500 entries this encyclopaedia explores the Renaissance period. It looks at the principal issues, arts, sciences, politics, religon and philosophy of the peoples of Europe throughout the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries. It explores the individuals and the movements they represented in all the fields of human endeavour. It brings into perspective the literary contributions of Boccaccio, Petrarch, Rabelais, Dante, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Shakespeare; the triumphs in exploration of Diaz, Cortes, Magellan and Columbus; the new musical forms of Machaut, Landini, Josquin des Pres, and Palestrina; the art of Leonardo, Michelangelo, Botticelli, and Raphael; the patronage of the Medici, the doges of Venice, and the Gonzaga dukes of Mantua; the spiritualist and humanist philosophies of Salutati, Bruni, Reuchin, Erasmus, Colet, and More; the architecture of Alberti, Vitruvius, Brunelleschi, Bramante, Guiliano da Sangallo; and the new science of Copernicus and Galileo.