CARPACCIO, VITTORE. - Venetian painter, b. around 1455, d. in 1525 or 1526.
According to tradition, C. was a pupil of Gentile Bellini; later he was claimed as a disciple of Lazzaro Bastiani; recently there has been a return to the tradition. Although his dated works go back only to 1490, other works certainly earlier in date have been identified on stylistic grounds. The polyptych of the cathedral of Zara, signed "Victoris Carpati veneti opus", can be traced back to 1480.
The Stories of St. Ursula, based on the Golden Legend of Jacopo da Varagine, are among his most admired works. These paintings are preserved in the Accademia gallery in Venice. The Arrival of St. Ursula in Cologne belongs to 1490, and the Dream of St. Ursula and the Farewell of the Betrothed to Their Parents to 1495. The most celebrated of these paintings is the Dream of St. Ursula, where the delightful figure of the Angel advancing incorporeally almost grazes the floor; and evocative is the contrast between the large room lit by a very clear light, the very tall canopy of the bed and the small figure of St. Ursula abandoned to her calm virginal sleep.
To the same period as the Stories of St. Ursula belongs the Miracle of the Cross (Venice, Accademia gallery), believed to be of 1494, in which C. surpasses Gentile Bellini in the vividness of the architecture, the animation of the figures and the use of plays of sparkling and varied lights. Of 1502 are the Calling of St. Matthew in S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, a painting all variegated with lights and shadows, and the Death of St. Jerome (ibid.), which presents one of C.'s most picturesque views. Very famous is, again in the same church, the canvas: St. George Kills the Dragon, where the cruel representation of the half-gnawed bodies has as its background an enchanting fairy-tale landscape.
In 1501 C. was paid for a painting in the hall of the Pregadi; in 1507 he was associated with Giambellino in the paintings for the hall of the Maggior Consiglio. Meanwhile, from 1504 dates the cycle of paintings with Stories of the Virgin, for the Scuola degli Albanesi in Venice, now divided among the Accademia of Bergamo, Brera, the Ca' d'Oro and the Louvre. Of 1510 is the Presentation in the Temple, coming from S. Giobbe, now at the Accademia in Venice, which shows Giorgionesque influences. In 1511 C. offered Francesco Gonzaga a view of Jerusalem.
Let us recall further: The Virgin, St. Vitalis and Other Saints in S. Vitale in Venice (1514); The Ten Thousand Martyrs of Ararat (Venice, Gallerie, 1515), on which Tintoretto studied; the Madonna in Throne of the cathedral of Capodistria (1516); the altarpiece in S. Francesco of Pirano (1518).
C. indeed derived his early forms from Gentile Bellini, but he soon abandoned them to give his style freer and more grandiose movements; his last works are sixteenth-century even in spirit. In the evolution of Venetian painting C., together with Giambellino, helped to create, with the new use of light, that sense of tone which is at the basis of all the painting of Giorgione and of Titian. - See Pl. LIII.
Bibliography13 works
Vincenzo Golzio