In offering tribute to those very few French artists who fashioned beautiful things definable as art of the Renaissance, it is desirable to spend a moment on recalling the character of that great ...

Renaissance geopolitics were notoriously convoluted, but the basic history can be neatly told: In 1524, Francis I of France led his forces into Italy. The Holy Roman Empire and France were the two ...

The painting had been hung above a hotplate in a kitchen in the French town of Compiegne A ... Christ Mocked, by the pre-Renaissance artist Cimabue, was discovered last month in northern France.