Fifteen hundred — age of discovery

On April 22, 1500, Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral reached the shores of Brazil, opening the largest country of South America to Europe. This occurred eight years after Columbus's discovery of America.

Around 1500, a revolution in cartography began. Waldseemüller in 1507 first mapped the New World under the name 'America'. The world was rapidly expanding in the geographical consciousness of Europeans.

Leonardo da Vinci began painting the Mona Lisa around 1503–1506. The turn of 1500 was the apex of the High Renaissance. Michelangelo was working on the Pietà (1498–1499), Botticelli on his final masterpieces.