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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

Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice

No registration required

Exhibition Overviews: Vittore Carpaccio

  • Friday, December 16, 2022
  • 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
  • East Building Auditorium
  • In-person

Presented by Eric Denker, guest lecturer

Due to the event’s popularity, this lecture has been moved to the East Building Auditorium.

Enjoy an overview of Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice, introducing the exhibition’s key works and examining how the artist’s large narrative paintings brought sacred history to life.

No registration required.

Unable to attend this event in-person? Register for our virtual lecture.