Vittore Carpaccio

Venetian, c. 1465 - 1525/1526

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Italian painter (1465-1526)

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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

The Flight into Egypt

Vittore Carpaccio · c. 1515 · oil on panel ·  Accession ID  1937.1.28

Vittore Carpaccio, The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand, c. 1514, red chalk on laid paper, with unrelated short pen strokes, Woodner Collection, 1991.182.15.a

The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand

Vittore Carpaccio · c. 1514 · red chalk on laid paper, with unrelated short pen strokes ·  Accession ID  1991.182.15.a

Vittore Carpaccio, Groups of Male Figures, c. 1514, red chalk with pen and brown ink on laid paper, Woodner Collection, 1991.182.15.b

Groups of Male Figures

Vittore Carpaccio · c. 1514 · red chalk with pen and brown ink on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1991.182.15.b

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

The Virgin Reading

Vittore Carpaccio · c. 1505 · oil on panel transferred to canvas ·  Accession ID  1939.1.354

Shown from the shins up, a woman holds a seated child in her lap below two winged baby heads and in front of a deep landscape in this vertical painting. The woman, child, and faces above all have pale skin and blond hair. The woman sits at the center of the painting with her body facing us. Her head tips slightly to our right, and she looks down and to the left with heavy-lidded eyes. She has a heart-shaped face, and her pink lips are closed. A white cloth drapes over her head and back beyond her shoulders. Her ruby-red dress is tied with a dark green, nearly black cord around the waist, and a voluminous lapis-blue robe with a coppery gold lining drapes heavily over her shoulders and covers her lap. She holds a book with a dark green cover open in her left hand, to our right, and braces the baby’s chest with her other hand. Both she and the child have delicate, gold lines creating halos. The baby’s pudgy body also faces us, and he wears only a translucent white garment that comes down to his elbows and hips. A slate-blue band is around his middle. The child looks down and to the left with light hazel eyes. He and the baby heads above have round faces, snub noses, rosy cheeks, and parted pink lips. He lightly grips the edge of the woman’s robe with his left hand, to our right, and holds the other hand up with first two fingers and thumb raised. The pair sit on a wide, maroon-red ledge or bench behind a second ledge, which runs across the bottom edge of the painting. A small bird with a tawny brown body, yellow-tipped wings, and a red, black, and white head perches on the right side of the closer ledge, near the lower right corner. A dirt path winds across a grassy area beyond the ledges. A white rabbit crouches in the distance to our left and two four-legged animals, perhaps stags, are to the right. Towns on hills along a body of water reach into the deep distance, where ice-blue mountains line the horizon about two-thirds of the way up the composition. Streaks of pale pink and yellow over the mountains deepen to blue across the top of the painting. The two baby heads are each flanked by a pair of brown and gray wings, and they float in banks of pale gray clouds.
Vittore Carpaccio, Madonna and Child, c. 1505/1510, oil on poplar panel, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1961.9.8

Madonna and Child

Vittore Carpaccio · c. 1505/1510 · oil on poplar panel ·  Accession ID  1961.9.8

Vittore Carpaccio, The Virgin and Four Other Women, 1505/1510, pen and brown ink with gray wash over charcoal on laid paper, Woodner Collection, Gift of Dian Woodner, 2017.111.2

The Virgin and Four Other Women

Vittore Carpaccio · 1505/1510 · pen and brown ink with gray wash over charcoal on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2017.111.2

Vittore Carpaccio, The Madonna and Child with Saints in a Landscape (Sacra Conversazione), 1500/1510, pen and brown ink (iron gall) with brown wash over black chalk on laid paper (cut vertically at center and reattached, laid on nineteenth century mount), Patrons' Permanent Fund, 1990.43.1

The Madonna and Child with Saints in a Landscape (Sacra Conversazione)

Vittore Carpaccio · 1500/1510 · pen and brown ink (iron gall) with brown wash over black chalk on laid paper (cut vertically at center and reattached, laid on nineteenth century mount) ·  Accession ID  1990.43.1

Vittore Carpaccio, Three Figures, ink heightened with white, Corcoran Collection, 2015.143.37

Three Figures

Vittore Carpaccio · · ink heightened with white ·  Accession ID  2015.143.37

Vittore Carpaccio, Three Philosophers, pen and black ink on laid paper, Woodner Collection, Gift of Andrea Woodner, 2006.11.26

Three Philosophers

Vittore Carpaccio · · pen and black ink on laid paper ·  Accession ID  2006.11.26

Bibliography

1962

  • Lauts, Jan. Carpaccio, Paintings and Drawings. Complete Edition. Trans Eria Millman and Marguerite Kay. Greenwich, Connecticut, 1962.

1991

  • Humfrey, Peter. Carpaccio. Florence, 1991.

1994

  • Sgarbi, Vittorio. Carpaccio. New York, London, and Paris, 1994. Italian ed. Milan, 1994.

2003

  • Boskovits, Miklós, and David Alan Brown, et al. Italian Paintings of the Fifteenth Century. The Systematic Catalogue of the National Gallery of Art. Washington, D.C., 2003: 187.