The Flowering of the Renaissance

Following the collapse of Medici rule in fifteenth-century Florence the centre of Renaissance activity moved first to Rome and finally to Venice. In the Rome of Julius II and Leo X which Michelangelo remodelled and beautified in the Venice of Titian and Tintoretto and Palladio the Renaissance reached the height of its splendour not only in the visual arts but also in the theatre history biography epic poetry and music.