In February 1382 Franceschina Grimani took as her husband Giacobello Trevisan, son of Stefano. A few months later, in May, another young noble girl, Franceschina Querini, married Bernardo Giustinian, son of the prosperous nobleman Orsato Giustinian. Despite the similarities shared by these two Venetian brides, one important factor separated them. Franceschina Grimani's father was Nicolò Grimani of Santa Sofia parish. According to the estimo of 1379, Nicolò's real wealth totaled approximately 30,000 ducats, making him one of the wealthiest men in Venice. In contrast, Franceschina Querini's father Marco possessed only 2,000 ducats in real wealth according to the same estimo. Despite the huge disparity between the economic fortunes of these two fathers of the bride, both of their daughters brought equal dowries of 1,000 ducats to their marriages.

Michael Baxandall's Study Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy opens with the useful reminder that a “painting is the deposit of a social relationship,” that is, a relationship between patron and client. When Baxandall and other historians of Renaissance art use the term patronage, they generally do so in a restricted sense to indicate the relationship that existed when an individual or an institution such as a guild, confraternity, or monastic establishment commissioned a specific work of art from an artist or artisan. Often formalized through a contract, the relationship between patron and client was essentially a legal one in which the artist agreed to render a specific service in return for a preestablished or a negotiable sum of money. With the completion of the commission, the relationship essentially ended, unless succeeded by another commission.

Christopher Marlowe's two-part Tamburlaine the Great (published 1590) captures all of the spirit and something of the scope of legendary violence the historical Tamerlane levied against his enemies. In the course of ten acts Tamburlaine's armies roll over several nations and cultures, leaving thousands of civilians enslaved or worse. Marlowe's graphic representation of the trail of blood and brutality is itself notorious.

In the interest of founding his own legend as the hypermasculine “Generall of the world” (1:5.1.451), Tamburlaine practices virtual genocide against his enemies and ethnocide against their cities, religions, and ways of life. By no means does he work alone. The soldier-males who serve in his armies eagerly follow his lead.

It is a Perennial Paradox of Erasmus studies that neither the wealth of autobiographical information that the Dutch humanist has left us nor the enormous mass of scholarly literature that has grown up around his life and works has ever given us a firm grip on the year of his birth and the chronology of his youth. We do not know with certainty, for example, how old Erasmus was when he entered Steyn monastery. If he were born in 1466, as he indicates at times, and became a postulant in the middle of 1487, as other information suggests, he would then have been twenty years of age. Yet in an appeal to Pope Leo X for a release from some of his monastic obligations in August 1516 Erasmus asserts that he was just sixteen when he was prevailed upon to enter the monastery. On the strength of this and other evidence R. L. DeMolen has argued with equal logic that Erasmus must have been born in 1469 and entered Steyn in 1485-86.