Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Michelangelo’s place in Renaissance art, how his famous frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel were created, and why those same frescoes are considered by many to be the very personification of Renaissance art itself.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Michelangelo’s place in Renaissance art, how his famous sculpture, Pieta, was created, and why the statue is considered by many to be the greatest sculptural work of the Roman Renaissance.

Through the investigation of primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the story behind the painting of the Last Judgment by Michelangelo, the techniques used by the artist to paint the masterpiece and how he used different shading, tones and images to convey his message of fear and dread.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Leonardo’s place in Renaissance Italian society, the techniques he used to produce his masterpiece The Last Supper, how those choices ultimately doomed the painting to the ravages of the elements, and how different restoration and conservation attempts have fared over the centuries.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Verrocchio’s place in Renaissance Florentine society, both in terms of the importance of his own artistic creations, especially his statue of David, and his link to and possible influence on his students, in particular a young inquisitive apprentice from Vinci named Leonardo.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain how the Medici family was able to come to power in Florence, how the family’s patronage of different artists and architects made Florence the very heart of the Renaissance and how the Medici family influence reached far beyond the borders of Tuscany to different countries in Europe and to the center of Christendom itself.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Michelangelo’s place in Florentine society, how his most famous sculpture, David, was created, and why the statue is considered by many to be the personification of the Florentine Renaissance.

In this full analysis of Machiavelli’s literary masterpiece, The Prince, and through the use of various other primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Machiavelli’s theories behind power and government, his ideas on how a ruler should deal with religion and the Church, and finally what he believed should be the relationship between a ruler and his or her subjects.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Leonardo’s place in Renaissance Florentine society, his major scientific and artistic works, and how da Vinci’s thirst for knowledge and his genius combined to produce the ultimate “Renaissance Man”.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Giotto’s role in revolutionizing artistic techniques in the late medieval period, how he used linear perspective to add a three-dimensional quality to his two-dimensional paintings and frescoes, and why he was so important to the Renaissance artists that would follow him over a century later.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Donatello’s place in early Renaissance Florentine society, both in terms of the importance of his own artistic creations, especially his statue of David, and his link to and possible influence on artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo who came to prominence in subsequent generations.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain why building the dome on Florence’s Duomo presented such a daunting task and Filippo Brunelleschi’s mathematical and engineering solutions to the problems. In an alternate and separate in-class activity, students will also try to replicate Brunelleschi’s dome using man-made materials (sugar cubes and play-doh) to understand the challenges of such an undertaking.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain Botticelli’s place in early Renaissance Florentine society, how and why he created his masterpiece The Birth of Venus, and why the painting personified such a radical shift in subject and techniques that in many ways helped usher in a new age of humanistic thinking.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain how a merchant became a Venetian Doge, what powers the Doge exercised in the performance of his duties and how the citizens of the Venetian Republic retained a measure of control over their elected officials.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the story behind the Fourth Crusade, what role the Venetians played in the campaign, and how the Fourth Crusade led to the dominance of Venice in Medieval European affairs and ultimately to the fall of Byzantium.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the story behind the construction and style used in designing, building and decorating St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, how and why the saint’s bones are in Venice in the first place when he died in Alexandria, and how the church became a symbol of Venetian wealth and power by the early Renaissance.

Through the use of various primary and secondary sources, including selections from the Travels of Marco Polo, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the story of Marco Polo’s adventures in Asia, how he described what he saw during his visit to China, and how Polo’s book inspired later generations of dreamers, merchants and monarchs across Europe in their push to explore the world looking for his riches.

In part 2 of this full analysis of Dante’s Divine Comedy, through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the images and stories of characters found in the second part of Dante’s masterpiece: Purgatorio, including what the different levels represent in terms of sin, why Dante might have chosen the different characters for each level and what overall message medieval Europeans were supposed to get out of reading the piece.

In part 3 of this full analysis of Dante’s Divine Comedy, through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the images and stories of characters found in the third part of Dante’s masterpiece: Paradiso, including what the different levels represent, why Dante might have chosen the different characters for each level and what overall message medieval Europeans were supposed to get out of reading the piece.

In part 1 of this full analysis of Dante’s Divine Comedy, through an in-depth analysis of various primary and secondary sources, students in this lesson will identify, understand and be able to explain the images and stories of characters found in the first part of Dante’s masterpiece: Inferno, including what the different levels represent in terms of sin, why Dante might have chosen the different characters for each level and what overall message medieval Europeans were supposed to get out of reading the piece.