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Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice

Shown from the hips up against a landscape, a woman with pale skin, wearing a burgundy-red dress with marigold-orange sleeves and a sheer veil, sits facing our left in profile as she reads a small book in this vertical painting. She has a straight nose and peach-colored lips. Her blond hair is covered by a bone-white headdress tied over her forehead. The veil drapes over the headdress, and her head is encircled with a faint gold ring, creating a halo. Her dress has full sleeves and is cinched into pleats at the high waist. The neckline is edged with a band of nickel gray decorated with a pattern of circles and leafy forms. The book has a red cover with a red ribbon, and she holds one index finger between the pages. A low chalk-white stone wall beyond the woman suggests she sits on a porch or balcony. A swath of powder-blue fabric drapes over the ledge on which she sits near one knee. To our left, a sliver of a shoulder, elbow, and toes of one foot suggest a person with pale skin draped in midnight blue, leaning back against a maroon-red pillow with tassels at the corners, in front of the woman and to our left. Behind that second person, in the landscape beyond the balcony, barren branches of a tree twist against the sky while a second tree, to our right, has a leafy, green canopy. A mustard-yellow meadow lined with bushes leads to the water’s edge, where ice-blue water leads back to rolling hills along the horizon. A few white buildings and a tower are clustered on the opposite shore. White and gray clouds float against the pale blue sky.
Vittore Carpaccio, The Virgin Reading, c. 1505, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.354
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Vittore Carpaccio, Ordination of Saint Stephen, 1511, oil on canvas, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldergalerie, n. 23

Image © bpk Bildagentur / Gemaldegalerie / Joerg P. Anders / Art Resource, NY

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Vittore Carpaccio, Saint Augustine in His Study, shortly after 1502, oil and tempera on canvas, Scuola Dalmata dei Santi Giorgio e Trifone, Venice

Photo credit: Matteo De Fina

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Vittore Carpaccio, The Flight into Egypt, 1516/1518, oil on panel, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.28

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Vittore Carpaccio, Two Women on a Balcony, c. 1492/1494, oil on panel, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Museo Correr, Cl. I n. 0046

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Vittore Carpaccio, Fishing and Fowling on the Lagoon, c. 1492/1494, oil on panel, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 79.PB.72

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Vittore Carpaccio, A Young Knight, 1510, oil on canvas, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Vittore Carpaccio, Doge Leonardo Loredan, c. 1501/1504, oil on panel, Fondazione Musei Civici de Venezia, Museo Correr, Cl. I no. 43

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Vittore Carpaccio, The Lion of Saint Mark, 1516, oil on canvas, Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, Palazzo Ducale

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Vittore Carpaccio, Meditation on the Passion of Christ, c. 1494–1496, oil on panel, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 11.118

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Vittore Carpaccio, Saint George and the Dragon and Four Scenes from the Martyrdom of Saint George, 1516, oil on canvas, Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore, Benedicti Claustra Onlus, Venice

Photo by Matteo De Fina, image © Courtesy of Abbazia di San Giorgio Maggiore - Benedicti Claustra Onlus

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Vittore Carpaccio, Birth of the Virgin, c. 1502/1503, oil on canvas, Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

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Vittore Carpaccio, Virgin Reading with the Christ Child (recto) Virgin Adoring the Child with the Young Baptist (verso), c. 1496-1497, pen and brown ink over red chalk, on laid paper, The Samuel Courtauld Trust, The Courtauld Gallery, London. Bridgeman Images

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Vittore Carpaccio, Studies of a Seated Youth in Armor, c. 1500-1505, black chalk, point of brush and gray wash highlighted with white gouache on blue paper, Lent by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisa Whittelsey Collection, The Elisa Whittelsey Fund, 1954

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