Oil paints, long familiar in the Netherlands, begin to be adopted in Italy in place of tempera

Andrea Mantegna combines an interest in classical detail and recently discovered perspective

In keeping with his personal interest in Plato, Cosimo de' Medici founds a Platonic Academy in Florence

After his death in 1464, Cosimo de' Medici acquires the posthumous title pater patriae – father of the fatherland

The Sicilian artist Antonello da Messina adopts the Flemish technique of painting in oils

The first Italian printing press is set up in Venice, which soon rivals Germany for the quality of its printing

Sandro Botticelli is established as one of the leading painters of Florence, working in particular for the Medici

The new pope, Sixtus IV, secures his name in history, establishing the Sistine chapel and the Sistine choir

Leonardo da Vinci joins the painters' guild in Florence, probably after training with Verrocchio

Giovanni Bellini becomes the key figure in the development of the Renaissance style in Venice

Ptolemy's concept of the world, with the Atlantic stretching to China and India, is printed in Bologna – fifteen years before Columbus sails west

A plot by the Pazzi family, with papal connivance, results in the murder of Guiliano de' Medici during high mass in Florence's cathedral

Leonardo da Vinci takes a professional interest in the new science of fortification

Botticelli paints the Birth of Venus and Spring for the villa of a Medici cousin of Lorenzo the Magnificent

Boiardo publishes a romantic epic, Orlando Innamorato, about Roland's love for a bewitching princess

Leonardo da Vinci begins an unprecedented series of detailed anatomical drawings, based on corpses dissected in Rome

Venice's annexation of Cyprus completes a useful chain of islands stretching to the eastern Mediterranean

Savonarola, the new prior of San Marco, is a stern critic of both the pope in Rome and the Medici in Florence

Rodrigo Borgia, elected pope as Alexander VI, already has four illegitimate children and possibly sires three more while pope

Pope Alexander VI draws a line through the Atlantic, dividing new discoveries between Spain (west) and Portugal (east)

Charles VIII, king of France, marches through the Alps with an army of 30,000, to claim the throne of Naples

Piero de' Medici and his brothers flee from Florence, after a mob ransacks the Medici palace

Charles VIII captures Naples in February and is crowned there in May, but is forced back across the Alps before the end of the year

The type faces known as roman and italic are created in Venice by the printers Nicolas Jenson and Aldus Manutius

Savonarola, in the carnival before Lent, urges the people of Florence to throw playing cards and lewd images on a great bonfire of vanities