CARPACCIO, VITTORE. — Venetian painter, born around 1455, died in 1525 or 1526.
According to tradition, C. was a pupil of Gentile Bellini; later he was held to have been a disciple of Lazzaro Bastiani; recently, the tradition has again been accepted. Although his dated works go back only to 1490, other works certainly earlier have been identified on the basis of stylistic features. The politico of the cathedral of Zara, signed “Victoris Carpati veneti opus,” may be dated to 1480.
The Stories of St. Ursula, based on the Legenda Aurea of Jacopo da Varagine, are among his most admired works. These paintings are preserved in the gallery of the Accademia in Venice. The Arrival of St. Ursula in Cologne belongs to 1490, while the Dream of St. Ursula and the Farewell of the Betrothed to Their Parents belong to 1495. The most celebrated of these paintings is the Dream of St. Ursula, in which the delightful figure of the Angel advancing incorporeally almost grazes the floor; evocative too is the contrast between the large room flooded with very bright light, the lofty canopy over the bed, and the little 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, gallery of the Accademia), thought to date from 1494, in which C. surpasses Gentile Bellini in the liveliness of the architecture, the animation of the figures, and the use of sparkling and varied plays of light. From 1502 are the Calling of St. Matthew in S. Giorgio degli Schiavoni, a painting entirely variegated with light and shadow, and the Death of St. Jerome (there), which presents one of C.’s most picturesque views. Very famous, also in the same church, is the canvas St. George Slays the Dragon, where the cruel depiction of half-gnawed bodies is set against 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, beginning in 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. The Presentation in the Temple, from S. Giobbe and now in the Accademia in Venice, dates from 1510 and shows Giorgionesque influences. In 1511 C. offered Francesco Gonzaga a view of Jerusalem.
We should also mention: The Virgin, St. Vitale, and Other Saints in S. Vitale in Venice (1514); The Ten Thousand Martyrs of Ararat (Venice, Gallerie, 1515), which Tintoretto studied; the Madonna Enthroned of the cathedral of Capodistria (1516); and the altarpiece in S. Francesco of Pirano (1518).
C. did indeed derive his earliest forms from Gentile Bellini, but he soon abandoned them in order to give his style freer and more grandiose movements; his later works are sixteenth-century in spirit as well. In the development of Venetian painting, C., together with Giambellino, contributed, through the new use of light, to creating that sense of tone which lies at the foundation of all the painting of Giorgione and Titian. — Vedi Tav. LIII.