Artist of the Day, June 7, 2021: Vittore Carpaccio, a Renaissance Italian painter (#1303)

 Vittore Carpaccio (1465 – 1525/1526) was an Italian painter of the Venetian school, who studied under Gentile Bellini. He is best known for a cycle of nine paintings, The Legend of Saint Ursula. His style was somewhat conservative, showing little influence from the Humanist trends that transformed Italian Renaissance painting during his lifetime.

"Carpaccio" is an italianized form of Scarpanza, the name of the Venetian merchant family into which the artist was born. After signing an early work "Vetor Scarpanzo," he used variants of the Latin "Carpatio" or "Carpathius" for the rest of his career.

Nothing definite is known about Carpaccio's training and early career, although it is likely that he apprenticed in the Bellini studio, where he probably worked with both Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. Subsequently he may have traveled for a period on the Italian mainland. His earliest dated work is the Arrival of Saint Ursula at Cologne from the cycle depicting the legend of Saint Ursula (originally Scuola di Sant'Orsola; now Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice), inscribed with the date 1490. By this time, although undoubtedly still young (stylistic evidence suggests that very few of his surviving paintings predate the Arrival at Cologne), he was well enough established as an independent painter to receive a commission of this prominence.

Carpaccio is best known for his narrative cycles for Venetian scuole, or lay confraternities. In addition to the one for Sant'Orsola, executed over the course of the 1490s, they include those for the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (still in the scuola, though not in their original location) and the Scuola degli Albanesi (now dispersed), both of which date from the first decade of the sixteenth century, and the Scuola di Santo Stefano (also dispersed), from the following decade. Carpaccio also contributed a painting to the prominent cycle depicting the Miracles of the Reliquary of the True Cross at the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista (now Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice) in 1494. In 1507 he attained the summit of prestige for Venetian history painting with a commission to contribute to the series of large pictures decorating the Sala del Gran (Maggior) Consiglio in the Palazzo Ducale, all of which were destroyed in the fire of 1577.

With their narrative directness, spatial clarity, multiplicity of figures, and decorative richness, Carpaccio's narrative pictures stand directly in the tradition of Venetian history painting that is exemplified by comparable works of Gentile Bellini. Yet a strikingly distinctive personality emerges as well, in their lively anecdote, vivid humanity, and fantastic architectural and landscape settings. Carpaccio's paintings for the scuole contain some of the most memorable images of Venetian Renaissance painting: the bustling Grand Canal at Rialto from the Miracle of the True Cross; the sleeping saint in her bedchamber from the Saint Ursula cycle; courtiers lounging in a loggia from the same group; and Saint Augustine in his study with his little dog beside him, from San Giorgio degli Schiavoni.

Carpaccio also executed a number of altarpieces for churches in Venice and the provinces, but his talents do not seem to have been best suited to works of this type. His efforts to achieve the idealized, monumental serenity of Giovanni Bellini's altarpieces can appear stilted, mechanical, and artificially inflated. More effective are Carpaccio's small-scale devotional works, some of which match the narrative cycles in their inventiveness and appeal.

In Carpaccio's best works, his pictorial style is characterized by fluent technique and a mastery of light and color. But even at the height of his career his oeuvre is strikingly uneven, and his powers and inspiration declined in the later years of his career. In addition to works clearly done with studio assistance, even some apparently autograph paintings seem flat and perfunctory. This variation in quality makes it very difficult to date Carpaccio's works on stylistic grounds, despite the survival of an unusually high proportion of dated pictures to serve as guideposts.  

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 Vittore Carpaccio

1485-95, The Meditation on the Passion

1490 ,Hunting on the Lagoon

1490-93, Man with Red Hat

1491, Apotheosis of St Ursula

 1495, Departure of the Pilgrims

1495, Holy Pilgrim and St. Sebastian

1495, The Dream of St. Ursula

1495-1500, The Ambassadors Depart

1496, Miracle of the Relic of the Cross at the Ponte di Rialto

1500, The Flight into Egypt

1501-02, Portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan

1502, St. Augustine in His Study

1502, St. George and the Dragon

1504, Annunciation

1505 ,The Dead Christ

1505, Holy Family and Donors

1505-10, The Virgin Reading

1505-10, Madonna and Blessing Child.

 1507, St. George Baptizing the Selenites

1508, Birth of the Virgin

1510, Portrait of a Venetian Nobleman

1510, Portrait of a Woman

1510, Sibyl

1510, Young Knight in a Landscape

1511, St Stephen is Consecrated Deacon

1514, Disputation of St Stephen

1514, San Vitale on horse

1514, The Sermon of St. Stephen

1516, The Lion of Saint Mark

1520, St. Paul

1520, Stoning of St Stephen