Leon battista ??: Did you mean...?

As described by the Roman historian Livy (1st century BC), the youthful Massiva was the nephew of a prince of Numidia in present-day Algeria who had supported Scipio Africanus (a Roman general so known because of his conquests in North Africa...

The Iberian conquistadors ("conquerors") were the first military men to explore, attack, and conquer territories in the Americas and Asia that would then become a part of the Spanish or Portuguese Empire. Indigenous peoples could not match...

The Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto (c. 1500-1542) landed on the west coast of Florida on 30 May 1539, hoping to find wealthy kingdoms to conquer and plunder. His crew journeyed for over four years in southeastern North America, savaging...

The Description of Africa is the first comprehensive book about Africa, written by Leo Africanus, an African scholar trained in the Islamic intellectual tradition, in 1526, during the Italian Renaissance. A skillful mixture of anthropology...

A 19th century CE oil painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme depicting Moses receiving the Ten Commandments from God on Mt. Sinai.

This map shows the fractured landscape of al-Andalus following the collapse of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba in 1031. Dozens of independent Muslim-ruled states, called taifas (from the Arabic for "party" or "faction"), rose from the ruins—engaged...

Cleopatra Before Caesar by Jean-Léon Gérôme, oil on canvas, 1866. Cleopatra confronts Gaius Julius Caesar after emerging from a roll of carpet. The Egyptian Queen had been driven from the palace in Alexandria by her brother/husband Ptolemy...

A painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris showing Thomas Jefferson (right), Benjamin Franklin (left), and John Adams drafting the U.S. Declaration of Independence in 1776. (Virginia Historical Society, Library of Congress)

Napoleon in Egypt, oil on panel by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1863. Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey.

Bonaparte before the Sphinx, oil on canvas by Jean-Léon Gérôme, 1886. Hearst Castle collection.