JOSQUIN Life&times

c1450

LIFE: Gossequin, as he is christened, is thought to have been born around this year, possibly in or near Condé (today Condé-sur-l’escaut), a town then under the House of Valois-burgundy.

TIMES: Francesco Sforza I besieges Milan, and becomes Duke of the citystate, founding the Sforza dynasty which will rule Milan for the next century.

1466

LIFE: After a stint as a choirboy in Cambrai, he becomes his uncle Gille Lebloitte dit Desprez’s legal heir. TIMES: The pioneering printer and bookseller Johannes Mentelin translates the Bible into German. The Mentelin Bible is the first to be printed in a vernacular language.

1497

LIFE: On the death of the composer Ockeghem, who may have been his teacher, he composes a lamentation Nymphes des bois.

TIMES: The Catholic Monarchs of Spain issue the ordinance of Medina del Campo, creating a money system that dominates international payments over the next three centuries.

1503

LIFE: He becomes choirmaster at Ferrara, and sings in the presence of Lucrezia Borgia. However, with the outbreak of plague the following year, he leaves Italy for the Low Countries.

TIMES: Leonardo da Vinci begins painting the Mona Lisa, of which he possibly makes two versions – one is believed to have been completed at Clos Lucé, near Tours.

1484

LIFE: Josquin is employed by the Sforza family in Milan alongside inventor and artist Leonardo da Vinci and the music theorist and composer Franchinus Gaffurius.

TIMES: Pope Sixtus IV issues a papal bull that decrees the inquisition, led by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger, should hunt down heretics and witches in Germany.

1521

LIFE: He dies on 27 August in Condé, Hainaut. He is buried there in Notre-dame Church, which is later destroyed – along with his tomb – during the French Revolution in 1793.

TIMES: In the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, Pope Leo X excommunicates Martin Luther, following the German theologian’s burning of a previous papal bull, Exsurge Domine.