New Frontiers
Plate 3
During the 1500s Europeans began to establish settlements in North America. The French built a fort on the northeast coast of present-day Florida in 1564, but the fort was soon taken over by Spanish forces based in St. Augustine. The illustrations of Flemish artist Theodore de Bry, such as this one of French colonists and Indians in Florida, provided Europeans with some of their first images of the New World.
Plate 5
In the 1500s the Spanish city of Seville emerged as a lively center of international exploration and trade. In 1519 Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan set off from Seville with a fleet of five ships on what was to be the first complete voyage around the world.
Plate 7
By the late 1400s European shipbuilders had developed a new three-masted vessel that had a rear rudder and both square and triangular sails. The larger ships of these new ships, usually called carracks, could carry enormous loads of cargo and found service primarily in trade. This painting (ca. 1521) by Flemish artist Joachim Patinir provides a glimpse of Portuguese carracks at sea.
Plate 9
Renaissance medicine made great strides in explaining the structure of the human body. Scholars began to focus on observation rather than theory, and the practice of dissection became an important tool for learning about human anatomy. This illustration from a manuscript of the 1400s shows a dissection in progress.
Plate 11
Weapons and methods of warfare changed considerably during the Renaissance. Primitive pistols packed with gunpowder and bullets appeared in the early 1300s. The invention of firing mechanisms in the 1400s made firearms more reliable and easier to use. Heavy cannons that fired large stones or iron balls came into use around the same time. By the late 1400s smaller cannons emerged that could be mounted on wheels and transported, even on ships. Cannons were produced in foundries, such as the one in this illustration.
Plate 15
Many advances occurred in music as well, including the development of new instruments and improvements in older ones. One of the most important new instruments was the violin, which has survived into the modern era with almost no change. This detail from The Sense of Hearing, painted around 1617 by Jan Brueghel the Elder, features the violin and a variety of other Renaissance instruments.
