Renaissance Masters
Often called the ultimate "Renaissance Man," he painted the Mona Lisa and filled notebooks with designs for flying machines.
Leonardo da Vinci
This Classical Indian mathematician and astronomer calculated the value of pi (π) and correctly argued that the earth rotates on its axis.
Aryabhata
This Roman general turned dictator was famously assassinated on the Ides of March in 44 BCE.
Julius Caesar
This ancient Chinese philosopher’s teachings on social harmony and balance formed the bedrock of East Asian culture.
Confucius
This teenage peasant girl led the French army to victory at Orléans before being captured and burned at the stake.
Joan of Arc
This Italian artist is best known for spending four years on his back painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
Michelangelo
This Italian astronomer used a telescope to support heliocentrism, leading to his house arrest by the Inquisition.
Galileo Galilei
She remains the only woman in Chinese history to rule as an emperor in her own right, during the Tang Dynasty.
Wu Zetian
This English lawyer and author of Utopia was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to acknowledge the King as head of the Church.
Thomas More
This Venetian merchant spent 17 years in the court of Kublai Khan and brought tales of the Silk Road back to Europe.
Marco Polo
Known for the massive fresco The School of Athens, he died at just 37 years old.
Raphael
This Polish priest is often confused with Galileo because he published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, placing the Sun at the center of the universe.
Nicolaus Copernicus
In his work The Prince, this Florentine diplomat argued that it is "better to be feared than loved."
Niccolò Machiavelli
A rare female voice in the Middle Ages, she wrote The City of Ladies to defend the intellectual and moral capabilities of women.
Christine de Pizan
This 7th-century Chinese monk took a 17-year journey to India to bring back Buddhist scriptures, inspiring the novel Journey to the West.
Xuanzang
This artist of The Three Ages of Man was known for his use of bold color and was the first painter to have a mainly international clientele of kings and popes.
Titian
This 16th-century Flemish physician is often called the "Father of Modern Anatomy" for his detailed dissections in De humani corporis fabrica
Andreas Vesalius
Also known as Li Shimin, this Tang Dynasty emperor is considered one of China's greatest for his rational administration and religious tolerance.
Taisong
Known as the "Prince of the Humanists," this Dutch scholar prepared new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament.
Desiderius Erasmus
Often called the "Shakespeare of India," this Gupta-era poet and playwright wrote the masterpiece The Recognition of Shakuntala.
This painter’s most famous works, The Birth of Venus and Primavera, are famous examples of art in Florentine during the Medici era.
Sandro Botticelli
He solved the greatest engineering puzzle of his time by designing the massive brick dome for the Florence Cathedral without using scaffolding.
Filippo Brunelleschi
He was crowned Emperor of the Romans in 800 CE, uniting much of Western Europe for the first time since the fall of Rome.
Charlemagne
This child prodigy and author of the Oration on the Dignity of Man claimed he could synthesize all of human knowledge into 900 key ideas.
Pico della Mirandola
This early Renaissance sculptor broke tradition by creating the first free-standing bronze nude since antiquity (his David).
Donatello