Christopher Marlowe, English dramatist and poet. Probably the greatest English dramatist before Shakespeare, Marlowe was educated at Cambridge and he went to London in 1587, where he became an actor and dramatist for the Lord Admiral's Comp...

William Shakespeare was an English poet, playwright and actor, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon". His exta...

Carlo Gesualdo, known as Gesualdo da Venosa, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza, was an Italian music composer, lutenist and nobleman of the late Renaissance. He is famous for his intensely expressive madrigals, which use a chromatic langu...

Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt, Dutch painter, was born at Delft, the son of a goldsmith, who apprenticed him to the copperplate engraver Hieronymus Wierix. He subsequently became a pupil of Willem Willemz and Augusteyn of Delft, until Anthoni...

Claudio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, viol player, and singer. His work marks the transition from Renaissance to Baroque music. During his long life he produced work that can be classified in both categories, and he was one of the mos...

Michelangelo Merisi, called later Caravaggio, was born in either Milan, or a town of Caravaggio near Milan, as the son of a ducal architect. His early training started in 1584 under Simone Peterzano, a little known pupil of Titian, and cont...

Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Baronet was an English politician, founder of the famous Cotton library. He was of a Huntingdonshire parentage and educated at Westminster School, where he became interested in antiquarian studies under William...

John Donne was an English poet and cleric in the Church of England. He is considered the pre-eminent representative of the metaphysical poets. His works are noted for their strong, sensual style and include sonnets, love poems, religious...

Thomas Tomkins was a Welsh-born English composer of the late Tudor and early Stuart period. In addition to being one of the prominent members of the English madrigal school, he was a skilled composer of keyboard and consort music, and the l...

Gabrielle d'Estrées, Duchess of Beaufort and Verneuil, Marchioness of Monceaux was a mistress, confidante and adviser of Henry IV of France. She persuaded Henry to renounce Protestantism in favour of Catholicism in 1593. Later she urged Fre...

Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, colour, and sensuality. He is well known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and hist...

Cats was contemporary with Hooft and Vondel and other distinguished Dutch writers in the golden age of Dutch literature, but his Orangist and Calvinistic opinions separated him from the liberal school of Amsterdam poets. He was, however, in...

Quevedo was a Spanish satirist, novelist and poet and one of the great writers of the Spanish Golden Age. His Los sueños is a brilliant and bitterly satiric account of the inhabitants of hell. Other major works include the philosophical tre...

Frans Hals was the great 17th-century portraitist of the Dutch bourgeoisie of Haarlem, where he spent practically all his life. Hals evolved a technique that was close to impressionism in its looseness, and he painted with increasing freedo...

Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft - Knight in the Order of Saint Michael - was a Dutch historian, poet and playwright from the period known as the Dutch Golden Age. Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, often abbreviated to P.C. Hooft, was born in Amsterdam...