Comments on the artistic interchange between conquered Byzantium and Venice as well as on its political background

Abstract

Political choices and historical imperatives dictated a rapprochement of the Eastern and Western Churches in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Venetian state, attracted by the superiority of Byzantine culture, always coveted a seat among its beneficiaries, while renowned Byzantine exiles sought Venetian assistance against the Ottomans. The Orthodox artworks they brought with them, gave the artists of Renaissance Venice the opportunity to commune with the art of Constantinople, creating new cultural contributions. In the first decades of the sixteenth century, the political and religious alliances of Ohrid and the West were associated with a Venetian-inspired artistic revival in painting on the territory of the Archbishop of Ohrid.