The Serenissima and the Fermo territory | Itinerario

Venice in 584 a.d. was included in the exarchate of Italy, with the passage of time it managed to obtain a number of privileges that allowed it to trade freely in the East, but especially to acquire an increasing political and economic independence. Strong from the autonomy conquered little by little, thanks to favorable geographical position, it obtained from Constantinople countless administrative and commercial benefits that increased from 1126, when Giovanni Comneno was forced to ingratiate himself with its valuable support in order to curb the expanding growth of the Scandinavian descendants who had settled in the French Normandy.

In fact, at first the antinormandy policy seemed to reinforce the fragile union between the byzantines and the venetians, but in 1175 the alliance between the lagoon city and the Normans caused a rift destined to renew itself with the joining of Venice in the IV Crusade. In 1176 Bisanzio with Manuele I Comneno tried to restore the ancient ties, but it proved totally useless. In fact, while for the Byzantine Empire, 1204, represented, along with the Sieze of Constantinople, the decadence of a power that had lasted over seven centuries, for Venice it meant the acquisition of merchant control over the Bosforo, the flourishing of a dynamic merchant activity and a privileged position in the rising latin Empire of the East. Precisely in such an exuberant period, the first political-commercial relationships developed between Fermo, "the City of the Eagle", and Venice, "the Republic of the Lion". While for the first it was equivalent to a tantalizing prospect of commercial exchange and subsequent economic development, to the latter it represented the opportunity to acquire those agricultural products like oil, wine, grain and citrus fruits of which the Fermo territory was abundant. The increase of merchant commercial relations between the two territories also favoured the encounter of the radiant historical-artistic heritage of the lagoon Republic, with the one from the Fermo territory. During the XV century Venice suffered a first economical arrest, but continued to be a lively place of cultural exchange and above all a stimulating artistic environment in which the basic principles of the Renaissance were reviewed and processed until the evolution of a somewhat autonomous movement. In Venice both painting and architecture were still very tied to byzantine and late gothic exemplars, but the partial surpassing of those models came right around the XV century, a period which testifies of the astonishing stylistic research, aimed at seizing Renaissance novelties, without forgetting late-Gothic figures. The Fermo territory could not be exempt from the Venetian influence that is apparent in several palaces and churches, as well as in works commissioned to excellent artists of the Venetian school such as Jacobello del Fiore, Carlo e Vittore Crivelli, and Marco di Paolo Veneziano and Pietro Antonio Solari.