However, as a literary language Venetian was overshadowed by Dante's Tuscan "dialect" (the best known writers of the Renaissance, such as Petrarch, Boccaccio and Machiavelli, were Tuscan and wrote in the Tuscan language) and languages of France like Occitan and the Oïl languages.
In the past, however, Venetian spread to other continents as a result of mass migration from the Veneto region between 1870 and 1905 and 1945 and 1960.