Read The Lives of the Artists

Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Leonardo, Raphael and Caravaggio under one Renaissance roof in Florence

Machiavelli's advice to a ruler: better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Michelangelo's New Sacristy, where Night and Day lie unfinished over the Medici tombs.

The Renaissance in one walkable city: Michelangelo's David, Brunelleschi's dome, and the Uffizi

Stand before the 5.17 m marble David — Michelangelo's flawless Renaissance colossus in Florence

Ezio Auditore in Renaissance Florence and Venice; the game that made the series.

Ten young Florentines tell a hundred stories while the plague rages; the first modern prose.

The novelist takes on the Dreyfus affair; the first biopic to win.