Bartholomeus Spranger (1546–1611) was born the third son to an Antwerp merchant family with business ties to both Rome and Tunis in northern Africa. With his older brothers continuing the family business, young Bartholomeus made the most of his chances…
File this under “things could always be worse.” The city of Haarlem, just west of Amsterdam, was decidedly not part of the early turmoil and revolt that began spreading across Holland, Flanders, and Brabant in the 1560s. There was no…
An example of the human experience from history. These were people like you and I. The years following Philip II’s ascension to the throne of a united Spain and the Seventeen Provinces of the Low Countries saw a dramatic rise…
The Center for Renaissance Studies at the Newberry Library is hosting a virtual talk on “The Art of Renaissance Warfare” on September 17th. “This public conversation explores how the development of gunpowder, stirrups, and new techniques for polishing armor…
I’m a history geek who enjoys geeking out over history with other geeks. In 2019, I hosted the Another Time & Place: Short-Form History Papers Competition at Lilies War to encourage people to get into the historical and anthropological side…
A map of this scale was a new undertaking for me (having completed a smaller three-sheet map of the northern Dutch provinces for last fall’s Queen’s Prize). The work researching and then producing the map was relatively considerable: about a…
