Assassination of rulers (often in church, where they were most accessible, and often by cadets of their family) had long played an important part in the Italian political process. From the end of the 14th century these deeds came frequently to be gilded by biblical and classical references: to the precedents of Brutus (condenmed by Dante as an arch-traitor, then raised by such republican enthusiasts as Michclangelo to heroic stature), Judith, killer of Holofernes, and David, slayer of Goliath. So the killing of Galeazzo Maria Sforza (1476) was carried out by three Milanesi patricians inspired in part by the teachings of the humanist Cola Montano, while the Pazzi conspiracy in Florence was seen by Alamanno Rinuccini as an emulation of ancient glory. Intellectuals who combined a taste for violence with a classicizing republicanism featured largely too in the plots of Stefano Porcari against Nicholas V (1453), of the Roman Academy against Paul II (1468), and of Pietro Paolo Boscoli against the Medici in 1513.

This definition is in context to Art History. See more contextual defintions for Uomo Universale (It.).