David, the Mona Lisa and a Sun-centred cosmos all arrived within twelve years
The 1500s opened with Michelangelo heading home to Florence to carve David. Within a dozen years Leonardo had finished the Mona Lisa, the Sistine Chapel ceiling was painted, and Copernicus had quietly put the Sun at the centre of everything. Around the same time, Portuguese ships were seizing the Indian Ocean.
Europe's artistic burst is the familiar part. Michelangelo returned to Florence in 1501 to start David, and he spent 1508 to 1512 on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Leonardo began the Mona Lisa in 1503 and finished it three years later. In 1512 Copernicus circulated his Commentariolus, a short manuscript putting the Sun at the centre of the solar system. Later in the century Tycho Brahe's measurements of a 1572 supernova undermined the idea of fixed celestial spheres, and Galileo built the first thermometer.
The century's power map was far wider than Europe. The dominant states included the Habsburg Spanish Empire, Portugal, the Ottomans, Safavid Persia, Mughal India and Ming China. The Safavids reunified Iran in 1501 and adopted Shia Islam, setting Persia apart from its largely Sunni neighbours. In South Asia, Babur, descended from both Timur and Genghis Khan, founded the Mughal Empire, which Akbar later extended across most of the subcontinent. Japan fought through the Sengoku civil wars and emerged unified under Toyotomi Hideyoshi.
At sea, Portugal moved fast. A clash off Cannanore in 1501 began its conflicts in the Indian Ocean, and victory at Diu in 1509 over a combined Gujarati, Mamluk and Calicut fleet opened its dominance of the spice trade. Afonso de Albuquerque then took Goa in 1510 and Malacca in 1511. Spain, meanwhile, built routes across the Pacific linking the Americas to Asia.
The costs were enormous. The first enslaved Africans were reported in the Americas in 1502, and in 1507 smallpox struck Hispaniola, devastating the Taíno. Mercantilism, the belief that one nation's gain must be another's loss, fed European wars and expansion. In 1505 a young Martin Luther entered an Augustinian monastery at Erfurt, and the Reformation that followed broke papal authority across much of northern Europe.
Source: 16th century
