The d’Este family has ruled the city of Modena and Reggio Emilia for centuries.

Leonello d’Este, one of the three illegitimate sons of Niccolò d'Este III, Marquess of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, and Stella de' Tolomei, had received a military education under the condottiero Braccio da Montone, and had been taught in letters by the humanist Guarino Veronese.

In 1425, after the execution of his elder brother Ugo Aldobrandino, he remained the sole heir of Niccolò.

In 1435, he had married Margherita Gonzaga, Margherita, who died in 1439 after giving birth to a child, Niccolò in 1438.

In 1441, Leonello had succeeded his father to his possession in northern Italy.

In 1444, Leonello had married Mary of Aragon, the illegitimate daughter of King Alfonso V of Naples.

Leonello, a skilled politician, is responsible of the construction of the first hospital of Ferrara, but he has distinguished himself chiefly as a man of culture.

Leon Battista Alberti has written his De Re Aedificatoria under Leonello's commission, and at the Ferrarese court work artists such as Pisanello, Iacopo Bellini, Giovanni da Oriolo, Andrea Mantegna, Piero della Francesca and the Netherlandish Rogier van der Weyden.

During his rule, the University of Ferrara gains prestige.

At Leonello’s death on October 1, 1450, his younger brother Borso d'Este, had succeeded to the marquisate.

On May 18, 1452, d’Este receives from Emperor Frederick III confirmation over his fiefs, as Duke of Modena and Reggio.

Alvise Cadamosto was born at the Ca' da Mosto, a palace on the Grand Canal of Venice from which his name derives.

His father was Giovanni da Mosto, a Venetian civil servant and merchant, and his mother Elizabeth Querini, from a leading patrician family of Venice.

Alvise is the eldest of three sons, having younger brothers Petro and Antonio.

At a remarkably young age, Cadamosto had cast out as a merchant adventurer, sailing with Venetian galleys in the Mediterranean.

From 1442 to 1448, Alvise has undertaken various trips on Venetian galleys to the Barbary Coast and Crete, as a commercial agent of his cousin, Andrea Barbarigo.

He had been appointed noble officer of the marine corps of crossbowmen on a galley to Alexandria in 1451.

The next year, he had served the same position on a Venetian galley to Flanders, returning to find his family disgraced and dispossessed.

His father, caught in a bribery scandal, had been banished from Venice, and taken refuge in the Duchy of Modena.

His Querini relatives had taken the opportunity to seize possession of his family's property.

This setback had marred the future prospects of Cadamosto's career in Venice, and probably encouraged his spirit of adventure, hoping to restore his family name and fortune by great feats of his own.

At the age of twenty-two, Alvise and his brother Antonio had embarked in August, 1454, on a Venetian merchant galley, captained by Marco Zen, destined for Flanders.

On the outward journey, the galley had been detained by bad weather near Cape St. Vincent, Portugal.

While waiting for the weather to improve, the Portuguese Prince Henry the Navigator, who has his seat nearby at Sagres, had dispatched a couple of his commercial agents, led by his secretary Antão Gonçalves and the local Venetian consul Patrizio di Conti, to interest the stranded Venetian merchants into opening trade contracts for sugar and other goods from the prince's Madeira island.

Informed by the visitors of Henry's recent discoveries in Africa, Cadamosto immediately applies to Prince Henry at his residence at Raposeira to undertake an expedition on his behalf.

Henry hires him on the spot.

Setting out on March 22, 1455, on a forty-three-ton caravel supplied by Prince Henry, with Vicente Dias as ship master, Cadamosto had proceeded to Porto Santo and Madeira, and thereafter has woven his way through the Canary Islands, making stops in La Gomera, El Hierro and La Palma before reaching the African coast around Cape Blanc.

Italian poet and diplomat Matteo Maria Boiardo, also a classical humanist, was born at, or near, Scandiano (today's province of Reggio Emilia); the son of Giovanni di Feltrino and Lucia Strozzi, he is of noble lineage, ranking as Count of Scandiano, with seignorial power over Arceto, Casalgrande, Gesso, and Torricella.

Boiardo is an ideal example of a gifted and accomplished courtier, possessing at the same time a manly heart and deep humanistic learning.

At an early age he had entered the University of Ferrara, acquired a good knowledge of Greek and Latin, and of some Oriental languages, and was in due time conferred a doctor of philosophy and in law.

Up to the year of his marriage to Taddea Gonzaga, the daughter of the Count of Novellara, in 1472, he had received many marks of favor from Borso d'Este, duke of Ferrara, having been sent to meet Emperor Frederick III in 1469, and afterwards visiting Pope Paul II in the train of Borso in 1471.

In 1473, he had joined the retinue that escorted Eleonora of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand I, to meet her spouse, Ercole, at Ferrara.

Five years later, Boiardo had been invested with the governorship of Reggio, an office which he will fill with noted success till his death, except for a brief interval (1481–86) when he is governor of Modena.

In his youth Boiardo had been a successful imitator of Petrarca's love poems.

More serious attempts had followed with the Istoria Imperiale, some adaptations of Nepos, Apuleius, Herodotus, Xenophon, etc., and his Eclogues.

These are followed by a comedy, Il Timone, perhaps in 1487.

He is best remembered, however, for his grandiose poem of chivalry and romance Orlando Innamorato.

Almost all Boiardo's works, and especially the Orlando Innamorato, are composed for the amusement of Duke Ercole and his court, though not written within its precincts.

His practice, it is said, was to retire to Scandiano or some other of his estates, and there to devote himself to composition, and historians state that he took care to insert in the descriptions of his poem those of the agreeable environs of his chateau, and that the greater part of the names of his heroes, as Mandricardo, Gradasse, Sacripant, Agramant and others, were merely the names of some of his peasants, which, from their uncouthness, appeared to him proper to be given to Saracen warriors.

It is uncertain when Boiardo wrote a poem about a self-composed, unusual Tarot game, which is of relevance to Tarot research of fifteenth century and the question of when Tarot developed.

A deck, which will be produced according to the poem (probably shortly after Boiardo's death) has partially survived.

The estimated Jewish population in Italy in 1491, numbering eighty thousand of a total twelve million, represents a one hundred percent increase in one hundred years.

The new Veneto-Papal alliance is on the offensive by July 1510.

An initial attack on French-occupied Genoa fails, but …

…Venetian troops under Lucio Malvezzo finally drive the French from Vicenza in early August; and …

…a joint force commanded by Francesco Maria della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, captures Modena on August 17.

Julius now excommunicates Alfonso d'Este, thus justifying an attack on the Duchy itself; in anticipation of his coming victory, the Pope travels to Bologna, so as to be nearby when Ferrara is taken.

The French army, however, has been left unopposed by the Swiss (who, having arrived in Lombardy, had been bribed into leaving by Louis) and is free to march south into the heart of Italy.

Charles II d'Amboise in early October advances on Bologna, splitting the Papal forces; by October 18, he is only a few miles from the city.

Julius now realizes that the Bolognese are openly hostile to the Papacy and will not offer any resistance to the French; left with only a detachment of Venetian cavalry, he resorts to excommunicating d'Amboise, who has in the meantime become convinced by the English ambassador to avoid attacking the person of the Pope and has thus withdrawn to Ferrara.

The Bolognesi have rebelled against Julius and toppled Michelangelo's bronze statue of the Pope from above the city gate.

Alfonso receives the shards and recasts them as a cannon named La Giulia, which he sets on the ramparts of the castello.

A newly assembled Papal army conquers Concordia in December and …