Venice nevertheless maintained its prestige and legendary splendor. Venetian artists first established an international reputation during these years. Long ties with Byzantium had left a lingering preference for gold mosaics and iconlike images of the Virgin, but by the 1470s Venetian painters had absorbed the renaissance innovations of Florence and central Italy. Through the city's preeminence in the oriental trade for spices and luxury goods, Venice's artists had always enjoyed access to the finest and most costly pigments. Greater contact with northern Europe now introduced them to the new technology of oil painting, which had recently been perfected in the Low Countries.
Oil paints are slow drying and can be blended.
Built up in translucent layers, they capture and reflect light in a way that the flat opaque colors of tempera paints cannot. Italian artists were quick to adopt the new medium, and in the works of Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini its full potential was realized. There, for the first time, is found the sensuous, luminous color that would characterize Venetian painting for centuries to come.