1495
Leonardo Begins the Last Supper
In the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Leonardo started painting his large mural of Christ and the apostles at the moment of betrayal's announcement. He painted in oil on dry plaster rather than true fresco, a disastrous choice for durability. The figures trembled with psychology no painter had attempted.
Columbus Enslaves Taino
On Hispaniola, Columbus began organizing systematic captures of the indigenous Taino population to be sent to Spanish slave markets. The Taino population would collapse over the next three decades from disease, labor, and slaughter. A million people or more, by some estimates, simply disappeared from the Caribbean historical record. His forced labor systems established the brutal template replicated across the Spanish Americas, making his governorship one of history's most consequential.
Syphilis Epidemic in Naples
During Charles VIII's occupation of Naples, French soldiers and Italian camp followers developed a new and horrifying pox. The disease spread across Europe within two years, blamed on every nationality in turn. It may have come from the Americas with Columbus's returning sailors. Sex and conquest had exchanged plagues. The disease's rapid mutation from fatal to chronic suggests a pathogen adapting swiftly to new hosts, a pattern epidemiologists still study.
Holy League Against France Formed
Venice, Milan, the Papal States, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire allied to eject Charles VIII from Italy. The French king fought his way back across the Alps at Fornovo in July, losing his baggage train but keeping his army mostly intact. The Italian Wars had acquired their pattern: coalition, invasion, retreat, repeat.
Diet of Worms Reforms Empire
Maximilian I and the German princes agreed at Worms to a package of imperial reforms including a perpetual public peace and a supreme court. The reforms tried to stitch the Holy Roman Empire into something resembling a state. They partially succeeded, and the imperial framework they built would persist until Napoleon.