In late spring of 1473 an elaborate wooden building was constructed in the piazza before the Roman church of Ss. Apostoli. This structure was to provide the setting for entertainments offered in honor of the marriage of Eleonora of Aragon, daughter of Ferrante, king of Naples, to Ercole d'Este, duke of Ferrara. The bride and her Neapolitan retinue, together with the Ferrarese contingent sent to Naples to fetch her, stayed in Rome for five days, from 5 June to 9 June. They were the guests of nephews of Sixtus IV: Pietro Riario, the cardinal of San Sisto, and Giuliano della Rovere, the cardinal of San Pietro in Vincoli.

Jacques Derrida begins a recent reflection upon Descartes's Discours de la méthode by remarking upon the metaphor of the path, way, or road contained within the etymology of the word “method”: “methodos, metahodos, c'est-à-dire ‘suivant la route,’ suivant le chemin, en suivant le chemin, en chemin.”

Act three of Daniel Casper von Lohenstein's 1665 German language play about Nero's assassination of his mother and erst-while co-regent Agrippina in A.D. 59 contains what could arguably be deemed one of the most salacious scenes produced on the early modern stage in central Europe.

In his famous “essay” of almost 150 years ago, Jacob Burckhardt articulated the single most fruitful idea about the Renaissance — that it was epitomized by “the discovery of the individual.” This discovery was double-sided: Man became a geistiges Individuum and recognized himself as such; and, as a consequence of this recognition, he also came to perceive die Fülle des Individuellen in the world around him. In other words, with the self-conscious perception of one's own uniqueness came the perception of the world as being full of unique entities.

This discovery was for Burckhardt not an unalloyed blessing. His auf sich selbst gestellten Persönlichkeit (so liberally translated as “free personality“) is the individual stripped bare of all traditional defenses, standing naked before the world, with only his own wits to rely on — hardly a comforting prospect.