The Italian Renaissance ushered in a new era of art and culture across Italy, lasting hundreds of years. While Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo were leading the art of the High Renaissance, another school of painting was forming in Northern Italy that was based on its own set of creative values. The Venetian School produced exquisite works of art that emphasized color over linework.

Beginning with the Bellini brothers, this idealogy adopted the relatively new medium of oil painting to create spontaneous pictures with little or no drawing made beforehand. Instead, artists from this school used numerous layers of pigment to construct their paintings.