Changes

During the various cataclysms that engulfed northern Italy in the centuries after the fall of Rome, many refugees fled to a lagoon in the Adriatic Sea, sometime in the 5th century AD.<ref>Norwich, John Julius. A History of Venice (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1982), p 13</ref> Over time, several settlements developed, on some islands and they merged to become a single city, which came to be known as Venice. It became a dependency of Byzantium in the 6th century AD .<ref>Norwich, p 14</ref>. The relationship with the successor state of the Roman Empire allowed Venice to become a great trading and maritime power by the 11th century AD.

The Republic has a long tradition of workshops who which produced works influenced by Byzantine icons. The city’s artists who formed associations came under the influence of those from nearby Padua. They introduced oil painting into to the city , and the works of Leonardo were also influential . The Venetians absorbed the new ideas and techniques and developed a new style of painting.  Jacopo Bellini (1400–1470) is considered to be the founder of the Venetian School which was characterized by the use of color and a love of light to create works which have remarkable environments. His sons Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, and his son-in-law Andrea Mantegna, also produced masterpieces. Bellini’s workshop trained many great artists. These included Titian (1498-1575) and Giorgione (c. 1477/8–1510). They are considered to have increased the portrayal of landscapes in painting , and they achieved great effects by organizing colors in evocative ways. Titian who lived to a great age was noted for his daring compositions. The Venetian School because of the city’s liberal atmosphere were able to paint nudes and also erotic paintings.  A good example of this openess is Titian’s Venus from 1538. Titian became court painter of the Hapsburg Court of Charles V , and he helped to spread the ideas and techniques of the Venetian School across Europe. Among the other great painters that lived and worked in the Republic were Tintoretto (1518–1594),and he helped to develop the Mannerist School which prefigured Baroque Art.  Venice also had a great an extraordinary architectural tradition as seen represented in the magnificent both St Mark’s Cathedral and the piazza. Many great architects worked in the city in the sixteenth century such as the great Palladio who is one of the most important domestic significant Venetians architects of all time. There also emerged a school of sculpture in the city that interpreted the classical tradition in a poetic and sensitive style. Venice made a great significant contribution to art, architecture , and sculpture especially in the 16th century and it is regarded as one of the great centres centers of the Renaissance, the equal of Rome and Florence. Moreover, the city was to become one of the centres centers of European art until the 18th century .<ref>Brown, Patricia Fortini. Painting and history in Renaissance Venice (London, Blackwell, 1984), p 113</ref>.

Venice was a great commercial center and maritime power. It was instrumental in the economic expansion of Italy that was so important for the artistic and intellectual flourishing, that was the Renaissance. The Venetians enabled city-states to become wealthy and allowed rich merchants and rulers to patronize the humanists’ scholars and artists. The city was much more receptive to new ideas and technologies than the rest of Italy because it was both a great trading power. This is best seen in the development of printing in the city-state and less dogmatic than the emergence of print culture. Venice because of its print industry and its liberal atmosphere meant that many intellectuals worked in the city. Then there was the emergence of the Venetian School of Painting. The ‘Serene Republic’ produced many rest of the greatest painters of the 16th century such as Titian and these decisively changed the history of art. It also produced a great many accomplished sculptures and architects, who still inspire admiration to this dayregion.