Skip to Main Content
Home>Stories>Who Is Vittore Carpaccio? Seven Things to Know

Vittore Carpaccio was a renowned artist in Renaissance Venice. He brought sacred history to life through large, spectacular narrative paintings that often referenced his beloved home. Venetians have celebrated him for centuries, but he was not always well known outside the city.

Close to us, a bearded, balding man leads a donkey carrying a woman and child to our right against a hilly landscape in this horizontal painting. All three people have pale, peachy skin and halos. The man has a gray beard and hair, and wears a royal-blue tunic under a ruby-red robe. He leans on a walking stick and looks back at the donkey. The woman riding the donkey wears a blue and gold brocade-like cloak covering her head and body. She has a straight nose, small pink lips, and she looks toward the infant she holds close to her body. The baby wears a white garment and reaches for the woman’s face with one hand as he turns to look over his shoulder toward us. The path they walk on is lined with grass and detailed plants. A river runs parallel to the path a short distance away. The horizon line comes about two-thirds of the way up the painting is lined with green trees, blue mountains, and a few buildings to our left. Wispy white clouds sweep across an azure-blue sky streaked with peach near the horizon.

Vittore Carpaccio, The Flight into Egypt, c. 1515, oil on panel, Andrew W. Mellon Collection, 1937.1.28

1. You may not have heard much about Carpaccio.

More than any of the great painters of Renaissance Venice, Carpaccio filled his works with proud, often heartfelt references to his native city. He is beloved by Venetians and visitors.

But outside Italy, Carpaccio is relatively unknown compared to legendary Venetian artists such as Giovanni Bellini, Titian, and Jacopo Tintoretto. This may be because so few of Carpaccio’s paintings are in American museums or collections. He remains a Venetian specialty.

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

2. How Carpaccio became a menu item.

In the United States, you are more likely to come across Carpaccio on a restaurant menu than on the walls of an art museum. This started in 1963, when the first large retrospective of Carpaccio’s paintings took place in Venice. A chef created a dish of raw, thinly sliced beef, and named it in honor of the painter. Steak carpaccio, said to be inspired by the artist’s vivid reds, is now a popular delicacy worldwide. Learn more about the origin of the dish.

Molmenti and Ludwig, Reconstruction of the Interior of the Scuola di Sant’Orsola with Carpaccio’s Canvases, 1906

3. The Venetian scuole helped launch his career.

In Renaissance Venice, each scuola honored a saint or other holy figure. Part social club, part charitable organization, a scuola helped the needy, provided dowries, and arranged funerals as well as celebrations on religious feast days. Women were active participants.

For Carpaccio and other accomplished artists, the scuole served as art patrons and unofficial galleries.

In 1490 the Scuola di Sant’Orsola commissioned a series of paintings from the young Carpaccio. The works told the story of Saint Ursula’s life and eventual martyrdom. Over the next 30 years, Carpaccio created some of his best-known paintings working on four such cycles for other scuole.

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

4. Carpaccio created a Renaissance version of cinema.

Carpaccio was above all a master visual storyteller. He painted cycles: the nine-canvas Life of Saint Ursula or the six-canvas Life of the Virgin Mary. These large, spectacular paintings tell their tales in episodes, almost like storyboards for a film.

The paintings were hung in sequence in open spaces, such as meeting halls or official reception rooms. Sixteenth-century Venetians would stroll past them to see the stories unfold.

Vittore Carpaccio, Ordination of Saint Stephen, 1511, oil on canvas, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, bpk Bildagentur / Gemaldegalerie / Joerg P. Anders / Art Resource, NY

5. Carpaccio’s Venice was a Renaissance-era information hub.

Around 1500 Venice was a global marketplace, comparable to Hong Kong or New York today. The thriving maritime empire traded with most of the known world.

Venetian merchant ships sailed to Asia, the Black Sea, and the Barbary Coast of North Africa, linking the Christian and Islamic worlds. They passed through the Strait of Gibraltar to England, France, and the Low Countries in northwestern Europe. Venice’s quays, squares, and streets were a kaleidoscope of styles, customs, goods, and information.

 

Vittore Carpaccio, Presentation of the Virgin, c. 1502/1504, oil on canvas, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

6. Carpaccio painted Venice and Jerusalem. In the same canvas.

Carpaccio was born in Venice and spent nearly all his life there. Elements of his native city pop up in many of his paintings, even the ones set in biblical times. This leads to a kind of fantasy architecture of mixed cityscapes.

The painter placed Venetian architecture alongside buildings and plants native to Jerusalem. This may have made the stories of Christ, the Virgin Mary, and the saints more relatable to Carpaccio’s patrons and the Venetian public.

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

7. Carpaccio’s art is full of religious symbols—including dragons.

For Carpaccio and other Renaissance artists, the dragon could serve as a symbol of the devil. The heroic dragon-slayer (seen above) Saint George represented noble, Christian values.

But aren’t Carpacccio’s dragons kind of. . . small? Consider the dragons of the popular HBO series Game of Thrones. Each is roughly the size of a modern-day jetliner.

Perhaps this dragon, somewhat smaller than Saint George’s horse, was meant to seem more convincing to Renaissance viewers. Its relatively modest size certainly made it easier for Carpaccio to place the scene of good triumphing over evil in the middle of a crowded town.


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

Vittore Carpaccio

Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice
November 20, 2022 – February 12, 2023

Explore

John Strand
Associate Senior Editor
Content Strategy, Publishing, and Branding

November 17, 2022