Short answers, pulled from the story.
1492 is classically cited as the beginning of the Renaissance in Spain, though the period is complex to date precisely. That year saw the end of the Reconquista, Columbus's voyage to the Americas, and Antonio de Nebrija's publication of the first Castilian grammar.
Garcilaso de la Vega (1501-1536) and Juan Boscán were the central figures of the italianizing current, introducing the sonnet and eleven-syllable verse into Castilian poetry. Fray Luis de León represented the Salmantine school and San Juan de la Cruz was the leading mystical poet.
The two schools are the Salmantine, associated with Fray Luis de León, and the Sevillian, associated with Fernando de Herrera. The Salmantine school favored concise language and short verse, while the Sevillian was grandiloquent, highly polished, and composed in long complex lines.
Lazarillo, published anonymously in 1554, narrates the life of a boy named Lázaro de Tormes from birth until he marries in Toledo. It inaugurated the picaresque novel as a genre, standing apart from chivalric and religious literature through its focus on social reality and a protagonist from the lowest class.
Italy served as the center of early printing and was the first to publish or translate major Spanish works including Amadís de Gaula and The Celestina. The papacies of two Valencians, Calixto III and Alejandro VI, tightened cultural ties between Spain and Rome. In 1526, the Italian diplomat Andrea Navagiero encouraged Juan Boscán to adapt Italian poetic forms into Castilian, launching the italianizing school.
Fray Luis de León was a Spanish Augustinian friar born in Cuenca in 1527 who held a chair in Theology at the University of Salamanca from 1561. He was denounced to the Inquisition for translating the Song of Songs into Castilian and was imprisoned for four years as a result.