House of Savoy

State · 1564–1720 CE · at its largest around 1713 CE

The lands of the dukes of Savoy, straddling the western Alps between France and Italy, whose capital was moved from Chambéry to Turin in 1563.

On its lands while it lasted

Michelangelo (1475 CE – 1564 CE): Florentine sculptor, painter and architect of the High Renaissance. He carved the Pietà and David, painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and the Last Judgement, and designed the dome of St Peter's.
John Calvin (1509 CE – 1564 CE): French theologian and reformer who led the Reformation in Geneva. His Institutes of the Christian Religion shaped Reformed and Presbyterian Protestantism.
Galileo Galilei (1564 CE – 1642 CE): Italian astronomer and physicist born in Pisa who pioneered experimental science and telescopic astronomy. Condemned by the Inquisition in 1633, he spent his last years under house arrest near Florence.
Caravaggio (1571 CE – 1610 CE): Italian painter active mainly in Rome whose dramatic realism and use of chiaroscuro transformed Baroque painting.
Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1599 CE): Caravaggio's Judith cutting off the Assyrian general's head, lit by a sudden glare against the dark: the drama that made his name in Rome. It hangs in the Palazzo Barberini.
The Calling of Saint Matthew (1600 CE): In a dark Roman room a shaft of light falls with Christ’s pointing hand on the tax collector Matthew, counting coins. Caravaggio’s drama of light and shadow changed European painting.
L'Orfeo (1607 CE): Claudio Monteverdi's opera was first performed at the Gonzaga court in Mantua in 1607. It is one of the earliest operas still regularly staged.
Judith Slaying Holofernes (c. 1620 CE): Artemisia Gentileschi, the most celebrated woman painter of her age, painted Judith killing the general with unflinching force. This version, made in Florence around 1620, hangs in the Uffizi.
Mercury barometer (1643 CE): Evangelista Torricelli, Galileo's successor in Florence, invented the mercury barometer in 1643, demonstrating atmospheric pressure and creating a vacuum.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 CE – 1778 CE): Genevan philosopher and writer whose The Social Contract (1762) and Emile influenced the French Revolution, modern political thought and education.