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Admin moved page What was the contribution of Venice to the Italian Renaissance? to What was the contribution of Venice to the Italian Renaissance
====The rise of Venice====
[[File: Venetian 2.jpg|300px|thumb|left|Painting of the Battle of Lepanto]]
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 city which was a Republic benefitted enormously from its role in the Crusades, and after several wars with other Italian maritime powers such as Genoa, it came to dominate the trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. The ‘Serene Republic’ as it was known was governed by a Doge who was elected by the citizen body.<ref>Norwich, p 17</ref> Venice became the wealthiest city in Europe and maintained the largest navy in the Mediterranean by 1200. It was very democratic for the time and its institutions and laws were by contemporary standards very equitable.
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 an extraordinary architectural tradition represented in 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 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 significant contribution to art, architecture, and sculpture especially in the 16th century and it is regarded as one of the great centers of the Renaissance, the equal of Rome and Florence. Moreover, the city was to become one of the centers of European art until the 18th century .<ref>Brown, Patricia Fortini. Painting and history in Renaissance Venice (London, Blackwell, 1984), p 113</ref>.
====Conclusion====
