Philip the Good

Person · 1396 CE – 1467 CE · in Europe

Duke of Burgundy from 1419, who by inheritance, purchase and conquest gathered Flanders, Brabant, Holland, Zeeland and Hainaut under one ruler: the start of the Burgundian Netherlands. His court at Brussels and Bruges patronised Jan van Eyck.

Related

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• William of Orange (1533 CE – 1584 CE): William the Silent, Prince of Orange, led the Dutch revolt against Philip II of Spain from 1568. Murdered in Delft in 1584, he is remembered as the father of the nation, and the Dutch royal house descends from him.
• The Tower of Babel (c. 1563 CE): Bruegel's tower rising in tiers beside a Flemish harbour like a half-built Colosseum, swarming with workers, as the Bible's story of human pride. It hangs in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.
• Bruegel, The Hunters in the Snow (1565 CE): Pieter Bruegel’s weary hunters and their dogs trudge home above a valley where villagers skate on frozen ponds. Painted in the hard winter of 1565 in Antwerp, it is one of a series of the months.
• Eighty Years' War (1568–1648 CE): The revolt of the Netherlands against Habsburg Spain, which began in 1568. It produced the independent Dutch Republic, recognised by the Peace of Münster in 1648.
• Brouwer Route (1611–1799 CE): Pioneered by Hendrik Brouwer in 1611, this Dutch East India Company route ran east from the Cape of Good Hope in the Roaring Forties before turning north to Java, cutting the voyage to Batavia by months.
• Abel Tasman’s voyage to Tasmania and New Zealand (1642–1643 CE): Sailing for the Dutch East India Company from Batavia via Mauritius, Abel Tasman became the first European to reach Tasmania and New Zealand, then continued to Tonga and Fiji before returning to Batavia.
• Java War (1825–1830 CE): Rebellion led by Prince Diponegoro against Dutch colonial rule in central Java, in which about 200,000 Javanese died.
• Vincent van Gogh (1853 CE – 1890 CE): Dutch Post-Impressionist painter whose most famous works, such as Sunflowers, were painted in Arles and Saint-Rémy. He sold little in his lifetime and died at 37.
• Aceh War (1873–1904 CE): Long war in which the Netherlands conquered the Sultanate of Aceh in northern Sumatra, at the cost of tens of thousands of lives.

Around the same time and place

• Printing press (c. 1440 CE): Gutenberg's press with movable metal type made mass production of books possible, transforming the spread of knowledge in Europe.
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452 CE – 1519 CE): Italian Renaissance polymath born in Vinci, painter of the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, whose notebooks record studies in anatomy, engineering and flight.
• Nicolaus Copernicus (1473 CE – 1543 CE): Polish astronomer and canon of Frombork in Royal Prussia who proposed a Sun-centred model of the universe in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, published in 1543, the year of his death.
• 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.
• Mona Lisa (c. 1503 CE): Leonardo da Vinci began this portrait of Lisa Gherardini in Florence around 1503 and kept working on it for years. It hangs in the Louvre and is among the most famous paintings in the world.
• Ninety-five Theses (1517 CE): In 1517 Martin Luther circulated his 95 theses against the sale of indulgences in Wittenberg. The dispute that followed launched the Protestant Reformation.
• Reconquista (718–1492 CE): Centuries-long series of campaigns by Christian kingdoms to take the Iberian Peninsula from Muslim rule, ending with the fall of Granada in 1492.
• Hundred Years' War (1337–1453 CE): Series of wars between England and France over the French throne, ending with England losing all its French lands except Calais.

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