ABSTRACT
The vast majority of people in western Christendom lived under the rule of princes. During this period the courts with which princes surrounded themselves tended to become larger, more elaborate and to be housed in ever more splendid palaces. Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile provide the most notable examples of such a policy, but the peripatetic nature of French kingship in the Renaissance is reflected in the map opposite, which locates a number of royal residences in the northern half of the kingdom. Federico embodied the Renaissance ideal of mastery of the arts of peace and those of war, being as notable. Like all households, those of Rome-based curial cardinals existed to serve the practical needs of the great man, through an inner circle of secretaries, treasurers and chaplains, and an outer one of servants. Andrea Barbarigo was a Venetian patrician merchant whose small household was fairly typical of the urban elite.
