AD 1500-1650 Renaissance

During the 16th century AD, Italian Renaissance art and culture spread throughout Europe, but Italy’s wealth and the political weakness of her quarrelling states attracted the ambitions of more powerful nations. The capture of Naples by Charles VIII of France in 1494 was the first of a disastrous series of foreign invasions.

In 1530 the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V annexed Milan, restored the Medici to Florence (they later became Grand Dukes of Tuscany), and created duchies of Savoy, Ferrara, Mantua, Urbino, Modena and Parma. Lucca, Genoa and Venice remained republics and popes ruled the Papal States. Southern Italy and Sicily continued as Spanish territories. This situation, established by the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis between France and Spain (1559), remained virtually unchanged until the 18th century.

The regional interests of the popes of the 15th and early 16th century distracted them from the wider interests of the Church. Faced with the challenge of Protestantism, the Church embraced reform in the later 16th century. Magnificent churches, palaces and squares in the new Baroque style made late16th-century Rome a jewel of the Counter-Reformation.

Conflict between Savoy and Spain in 1612 started another series of wars in the north, eventually involving France, Venice and other duchies. Plagues and a world recession in the 1630s added to an already stagnant economic situation that affected Italy for centuries.