Famous Europeans 1400-1500

Afonso V KG, called the African, was King of Portugal and the Algarves. His sobriquet refers to his conquests in Northern Africa.

Lorenzo de' Medici was an Italian statesman and de facto ruler of the Florentine Republic during the Italian Renaissance.

Isabella I, also known as Isabella the Catholic, was queen of Castile and León. She and her husband, Ferdinand II of Aragon, brought stability to the kingdoms that became the basis for the unification of Spain.

Ferdinand the Catholic (Aragonese: Ferrando II, Spanish: Fernando II, Catalan: Ferran II; 10 March 1452 – 23 January 1516) was King of Aragon (as Ferdinand II), Sicily, Naples (as Ferdinand III), Majorca, Valencia, Sardinia, and Navarre, Count of Barcelona, jure uxoris King of Castile (1474–1504, as Ferdinand V, in right of his wife, Isabella I) and then regent of that country also from 1508 to his death, in the name of his reportedly mentally unstable daughter Joanna.

Caterina Sforza, Countess of Forlì was an Italian noblewoman, the illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan and Lucrezia Landriani, the wife of the courtier Gian Piero Landriani, a close friend of the Duke.

Giovanni Sforza d'Aragona was an Italian condottiero, lord of Pesaro and Gradara from 1483 until his death. He is best known as the first husband of Lucrezia Borgia. Their marriage was annulled on claims of his impotence in March 1497.

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli was an Italian historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, humanist and writer based in Florence during the Renaissance.

Lucrezia Borgia was the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, and Vannozza dei Cattanei. Her brothers included Cesare Borgia, Giovanni Borgia, and Gioffre Borgia.

Henry VIII was king of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was lord, and later king, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France.

Charles V (Spanish: Carlos I; Dutch: Karel V; German: Karl V.; Italian: Carlo V; Czech: Karel V.; French: Charles Quint; 24 February 1500 – 21 September 1558) was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I as Holy Roman Emperor and his son Philip II as King of Spain in 1556.

Infante Henry, Duke of Viseu, better known as Henry the Navigator, was an important figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire and the Age of Discoveries in total.

Bartolomeu Dias, a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first European known to have done so.

Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer, navigator, and colonizer, born in the Republic of Genoa, in what is today northwestern Italy.

Amerigo Vespucci (Italian pronunciation: [ameˈriɡo vesˈputtʃi]) (March 9, 1454 – February 22, 1512) was an Italian explorer, financier, navigator and cartographer who first demonstrated that Brazil and the West Indies did not represent Asia's eastern outskirts as initially conjectured from Columbus' voyages, but instead constituted an entirely separate landmass hitherto unknown to Afro-Eurasians. Colloquially referred to as the New World, this second super continent came to be termed "America", probably deriving its name from the feminized Latin version of Vespucci's first name.

D. Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira, was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India.

Pedro Álvares Cabral was a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the discoverer of Brazil. Cabral conducted the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claimed it for Portugal.

Ferdinand Magellan was a Portuguese explorer. He was born in a still disputed location in northern Portugal, and served King Charles I of Spain in search of a westward route to the "Spice Islands".

Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg was a German blacksmith, goldsmith, printer, and publisher who introduced printing to Europe.

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer.

Nicolaus Copernicus was a Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who formulated a heliocentric model of the universe which placed the Sun, rather than the Earth, at the center.