Venice is distinct from Florence and Rome, most notably because it had no history attaching it to ancient Rome. Built on bogs that did not provide a solid foundation for large urban structures, it did not even begin to emerge as an inhabitable city until the middle ages when the small islands began to silt up giving the inhabitants more and more solid land for structuring a city. As a growing maritime power, Venice turned eastward towards Constantinople that had developed its own visual vocabulary in the sixth century under the Emperor Justinian and after the decline of Rome as a dominating power. One dominating aspect of Venetian art was the development of oil painting that allowed the shimmering quality of light reflected from the city’s waterways to be incorporated in the textured surfaces of paintings thus giving them an increased liveliness as viewers moved before them, changing the refracted light.