A period in European history marked by efforts to reform the Christian Church
The wave of French poetry under Francis I and his sons, the Lyon school of Maurice Sceve and Louise Labe, the seven poets of the Pleiade, Du Bellay's manifesto, Ronsard's life, odes and sonnets, and the long divide between form and content in French letters.
How classical drama and Petrarchan verse reached England through Udall, Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, and how, in Germany, religious controversy swallowed literature, as seen in Murner, Sebastian Franck and the cobbler-poet Hans Sachs of Nuremberg.
Portuguese letters from Gil Vicente to Sa de Miranda and the historians of the Indies, the Castilian language and its literature, Garcilaso de la Vega, the pastoral romance, Las Casas's protest against the enslavement of the Indians, Bernal Diaz, and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, linked to the picaresque novel Lazarillo de Tormes.
The Second Commandment and the Reformers' attitude to images, Luther's and Calvin's views, the destruction of religious art, the decline of Gothic under Reformation and Renaissance alike, and Francis I's patronage of Italian art in France.
The exchange of artists between Italy and France, the struggle between Gothic and classical styles in the Loire chateaux, Chambord and its neighbors, and the creation of the Fontainebleau school under Rosso and Primaticcio.
The triumph of the classical style at Fontainebleau, Serlio's treatise, the building of the Louvre by Pierre Lescot and Jean Goujon, the careers of Philibert Delorme and Jean Bullant, and a fair verdict on Italian influence over the Gothic tradition.
Woodwork, metalwork, glass, tapestry and Limoges enamel under Francis I and Henry II, French portraiture and the Clouet family, and French sculpture from the royal tombs to Jean Goujon's fountain nymphs.
Netherlandish painting between Italian ideals and national realism, Michelangelo's criticism, the families of painters, and the life, peasant scenes, landscapes, the seasons cycle and philosophy of Pieter Bruegel the Elder.
German architecture and applied arts after the Reformation, sculptors and goldsmiths, the second rank of painters (Baldung Grien, Amberger, Altdorfer), the long career of Lucas Cranach the Elder, his portraits and nudes, and the decline of German painting.
The transition from Gothic to Renaissance in Tudor England, Torrigiano's tomb of Henry VII, the unfinished tombs of Wolsey and Henry VIII, King's College Chapel, and the great country palaces of Hampton Court, Sutton Place and Nonsuch.
Holbein's training, his years in Basel and Lucerne, his religious pictures, the portraits of Erasmus, the Dance of Death, the move to England, the portrait of Thomas More, his family portrait, the Steelyard murals and the portrait of Thomas Cromwell.
Holbein's later career in England, his appointment as court painter, his portraits of Henry VIII and his family, the Whitehall mural, his last self-portraits and death in 1543, and a final assessment of his art.
