← Fame through time1400-1499
The 15th century
Whose working lives fell in the 15th century. Books are measured from 1800 and readers from 2015, so for this period we can say who lived then, not who was talked about then.
Lived then
The most notable people whose working lives fell in the 15th century, ranked where coverage and readership agree.
- 1
Christopher Columbus21 decades - 2
Leonardo da Vinci22 decades - 3
Sandro Botticelli22 decades - 4
Girolamo Savonarola22 decades - 5
Pope Julius II22 decades - 6
John Cabot16 decades - 7
Fra Angelico21 decades - 8
Pope Sixtus IV22 decades - 9
Pope Pius II21 decades - 10
Leon Battista Alberti22 decades - 11
Filippo Brunelleschi22 decades - 12
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola22 decades - 13
Pope Martin V5 decades - 14
Piero della Francesca22 decades - 15
Pope Paul II11 decades - 16
Masaccio22 decades - 17
Rita of Cascia19 decades - 18
Luca Pacioli22 decades - 19
Pope Nicholas V10 decades - 20
Antipope John XXIII0 decades - 21
Andrea Mantegna22 decades - 22
Giovanni Bellini22 decades - 23
Pope Innocent VIII20 decades - 24
Marsilio Ficino22 decades - 25
Donato Bramante22 decades
How to read these rankings
- Attention, not reputation. A place on these lists reflects the attention a person still draws in the public record. It is not a judgement on the life.
- Fame in print. The curves show how often a name appeared in the books of each decade from 1800 to 2019, drawn from the Google Books Ngram corpus.
- Gaps are left as gaps. Where the record is too thin to be fair, we would rather show nothing than guess.