1725
Death of Peter the Great
The tsar who had built St. Petersburg, shaved the boyars' beards, cut open cadavers, built a navy, killed his own son, and dragged Russia toward Europe died at fifty-two, probably of uremia, probably after a final heroic act of wading into the Gulf of Finland to save drowning sailors. His empire survived him.
Vivaldi Publishes The Four Seasons
Antonio Vivaldi, the red-haired priest of the Venetian orphanage, published twelve concertos in Amsterdam. The first four, each accompanied by a sonnet, pictured spring birds, summer storms, autumn harvests, and winter ice. They were immediately copied across Europe. Three centuries later, they are still the most played instrumental music in the world.
Giambattista Vico's Scienza Nuova
A Neapolitan professor of rhetoric, poor and ignored, published a book arguing that human societies pass through ages of gods, heroes, and men, and that their poetry and myth contained coded histories. Almost no one read it in his lifetime. Two centuries later, Vico would be hailed as the first modern philosopher of history.
Casanova Born
Giacomo Casanova was born in Venice to an actress and, possibly, a nobleman. He would be expelled from a seminary for scandal, imprisoned in the Piombi, escape across the rooftops, seduce his way across Europe, work as a librarian, and finally write twelve volumes of memoirs that became one of the great self-portraits of the age.
Catherine I of Russia Crowned
A Livonian peasant girl who had been Peter the Great's laundress, mistress, second wife, and empress-consort, succeeded him on the throne with the guards' support. She was illiterate and adored. Menshikov effectively ruled. Her two-year reign would open Russia's century of female monarchs: Anna, Elizabeth, Catherine the Great. No other European dynasty would entrust power to women so repeatedly, or so successfully.