The generalizations and comparisons of the Florentines are absent; nor was it till a late date of the Renaissance that the Venetian history came to be written as a whole.

It would seem as though the constitutional stability which formed the secret of the strength of Venice was also the source of comparative intellectual inertness.

This contrast between the two republics displayed itself even in their art.

Statues of Judith, the tyrannicide, and of David, the liberator of his country, adorned the squares and loggie of Florence.
The painters of Venice represented their commonwealth as a beautiful queen receiving the homage of her subjects and the world.

Florence had no mythus similar to that which made Venice the Bride of the Sea, and which justified the Doge in hailing Caterina Cornaro as daughter of S.
Mark's (1471).