Venice

At the time of the Lombard invasions in the late 6th century, the islands of the Lagoon became the ultimate refuge of people from the coast and were inhabited for the first time. Salt was their main asset, but soon the territory came under the authority of the exarch of Ravenna and took advantage of its geographical situation between Constantinople and Western Europe to begin trading. As a Byzantine staging post it sent silk, spices and precious metals to the West, and slaves, salt and wood to Constantinople and the Muslim Levant.

Paoluccio Anafesto (r. 697–717) was the first doge of Venice and the instigator of the oligarchic Republic. The doge (from the Latin dux, "leader") was elected for life by the Grand Council, made up of representatives of Venice's great families. Early in the ninth century the doge took up residence on the Rialto and the city became an expanding, trade-based city-state, like the other major ports on the Italian peninsula: the "Repubbliche Marinare" of Genoa, Pisa and Amalfi.  

Venice's situation in the Mediterranean was critical to its history and the shaping of its identity. What did this crossroads between Europe and the Near East retain of the different influences it was subjected to? And what part did it play in the Mediterranean?

The foundations of power (ninth–eleventh centuries)

Venice's trade opening onto the Adriatic depended on its relationship with Constantinople, but it was able to break free of Turkish control under the doge Giustiniano Participazio (r. 827–29). The relics of St Mark the Evangelist were brought from a Coptic church in Alexandria and Mark and his lion became the city's patrons, replacing the Byzantine saint Theodore. The doge set about building the Palatine Chapel to house the relics, and St Mark's basilica as the state church. After the destruction of St Marks by fire, rebuilding began in 1063 and the basilica was consecrated in 1094. 

Extensions and decorations would continue until the nineteenth century, but this first phase, in the tenth–eleventh centuries, illustrates Venice's central role in inter-Mediterranean relationships at the time. The architectural model was the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, with a Greek cross plan and five cupolas. The mosaics, with their gold ground, draw for their techniques, imagery and style on decorations to be found in Constantinople and Ravenna. They borrow, too, new representational modes from the medieval art of Western Europe. The craftsmen working on St Mark's were Venetians, Tuscans and Lombards, who thus brought and disseminated their skills.

With the basilica as its symbol, Venice itself showed Constantinople's equal in terms of dignity. In a declaration of religious and political independence, it had abandoned the Greek for the Latin style, while at the same time positioning itself as a rival to Rome and St Peter's.

By thus laying its claim as the new Alexandria, Venice stimulated commercial, diplomatic and cultural exchange with the southern and eastern Mediterranean. And as point of departure for pilgrimages to the Holy Land, it became the pivot for Europe and the Near East.

La Serenissima (eleventh–thirteenth centuries)

The fall of the Eastern Christian Empire meant the apotheosis of Venice La Serenissima. When the Byzantine Empire was carved up after the Fourth Crusade (1202–04), Venice extended its territory to include the Greek islands and part of Constantinople, while also considerably enriching its patrimony: in the form of four bronze horses from an ancient quadriga, a symbolically charged item of Byzantine booty was brought from the former capital and set on the facade of St Mark's. The basilica's collection also became home to numerous masterpieces: to the many Byzantine works were added Islamic pieces, notably from the Fatimid period (969–1171) in Egypt and Syria and doubtless acquired in the course of diplomatic exchanges. One striking example is the rock crystal ewer from the reign of Al-Aziz (r. 975–96), with its ornamentation of seated leopards. Although collected as trophies of war, the Islamic items in the St Mark's collection were the trigger for interest in this artistic idiom.

Prosperous on the sea but much less so on land – because of barbarian incursions – Venice made the most of the enormous potential for trade with the Levant. As the only European city to enjoy regular diplomatic and business exchanges with the Mamelukes (1250-1517) of Egypt and Syria, it was familiar with Muslim customs, religion, philosophy, science, technology and art. In the thirteenth century the lucrative glass industry began to grow on the lagoon, with the workshops eventually grouping together in Murano so as to benefit from government control and backing. For several centuries Muslim artists had led the way in glassmaking and it seems clear that their counterparts in Venice had learnt their skills by direct contact with them. 

At this time Venice was master of the eastern Mediterranean. The return of merchant and voyager Marco Polo in 1295 paved the way for trade between Asia and Europe and in symbolic terms was La Serenissima's high point.

Political decline and artistic apogee

In the 14th century Venetian merchants were to be found all over the Mediterranean, and in North Africa, the Levant, Cyprus and the Black Sea – and had even followed the coastline as far as Flanders. The city had a huge military and commercial fleet and its authority on the seas was ensured by the technical superiority of galleys whose design was borrowed from the Byzantines.

However, the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1492) and the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama (1498) opened up new trade and maritime possibilities. Much more powerful than Venice, France, Spain and Holland became major competitors. Power plays between Venice, the duchy of Milan, the Papal States, the kingdom of Naples and the republic of Florence led to conflict: the War of Chioggia (1378–81) and the Italian Wars (1494) culminated in a Franco-Venetian victory at Marignan in 1515.

In the Eastern Mediterranean, the Ottoman Empire (1281–1924) conquered Venice's territories one by one. At the Battle of Lepanto in Greece (1571) the Christian allies from Italy succeeded in containing the Turks, but Venice lost Cyprus in the conflict. Nonetheless, relations between Venice and Turkey were not limited to hostilities: there was also considerable business, cultural and artistic interchange.

The rich cultural influences that fuelled Venice brought the city's art scene to its maturity, and for large-scale commissions the doges now looked to Venetian artists: the final phase of the Pala d’Oro altarpiece in St Mark's, for example, was commissioned by the doge Andrea Dandolo (r. 1343–54) from two Venetian goldsmiths; and the ornamenting of the doges' palace was largely carried out by Venetian painters and decorative artists under Francesco Foscari (r. 1423–57).

Venice remained a stopping-off place for famous artists and in the late fifteenth and on into the sixteenth century its patrimony was enriched by Florentine and Sicilian virtuosi, among them Antonello da Messina. At the same time the best Venetian artists were being sent to foreign courts: Gentile Bellini, for instance, painted the portrait of Mehmet II in Istanbul in 1479. Down the centuries, then, Venice learnt to work in an idiom whose originality nonetheless testified to a mix of East and West.

Yet while the great names in art flocked to Venice – Giorgione, Titian, Véronese, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Canova and so many others – and the city became a must for the Grand Tour in the 18th century, an ineluctable political decline set in and trade gradually dropped off. In 1797 Venice was taken by Napoleon Bonaparte during his Italian campaign: as a symbol of victory he carried off the bronze horses brought from Constantinople to the facade of St Mark's and placed them atop the Arc du Carrousel in the Tuileries gardens in Paris.

E.D.-P.