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On the R. wall opposite the Carpaccio is hung, 1587, a magnificent work of the painter's old age, Jupiter and Antiope, unhappily much injured by fire and by more than one restoration. Two characteristic Sante Conversazioni from Bonifazio's atelier may next be noted, 1172, over a doorway; and 1171, skied on the L. wall.
So, when he grew to be a man, and his fame began to spread, the first great pictures he painted were of the story of St. Ursula, told in loving detail, as only one who loved the story could do it. But though Carpaccio might paint pictures of these old stories, it was always through the golden haze of Venice that he saw them. His St.
Our national collection was without any example until 1896, when Mansueti's Symbolic representation of the Crucifixion was purchased. In 1905 the National Art-Collections Fund secured Bastiani's Virgin and Child, and in 1910 Sir Claude Phillips presented Diana's Christ Blessing. Alas! that we are still without anything from the hand of Vittore Carpaccio.
First, is it conceivable that Titian in the heyday of his glory should have been asked to paint such a picture not a mere mural decoration for such a place? There is no instance of anything of the kind having been done with the canvases painted by Gentile Bellini, Carpaccio, Mansueti, and others for the various Scuole of Venice.
A quaint and ugly but fascinating thing, attributed to Carpaccio and said to represent two courtesans at home, is the most memorable. Why it should not equally represent two ladies of unimpeachable character, I cannot see. Ruskin went beyond everything in his praises, in St. Mark's Rest, of this picture. He suggests that it is the best picture in the world. But read his amazing words.
There is another thing which we learn about Carpaccio from his pictures, and that is, that he must have loved to listen to old legends and stories of the saints, and that he stored them up in his mind, just as he treasured the remembrance of the gay processions and the flapping wings of those crimson and green parrots.
Peter explained his old acquaintance with the charging saint and his curiosity about the lady, but when the custodian had brought a silver paper screen to gather the little light there was upon the mellow old Carpaccio, he looked upon her with a vague dissatisfaction. "It's the same dragon and the same young man," he admitted. "I know him by the hair and by the determined expression.
The history of this independent group of painters has only of late years been elucidated; Kugler, after a page devoted to Carpaccio, dismissed them with the remark that Mansueti and Bastiani were both pupils of Carpaccio, and that Benedetto Diana was "less distinguished."
These scenes from the life of St. Ursula are hardly less delightfully quaint than the somewhat similar series that was painted by Carpaccio for the scuola of the Saint at Venice, and that are now preserved in the Accademia.
It is the S. Ursula pictures in Room XVI for which, after Titian's "Assumption," most visitors to Venice esteem the Accademia; but to my mind the charm of Carpaccio is not displayed here so fully as in his decorations at S. Giorgio. The Ursula pictures are, however, of deep interest and are unforgettable. But first for the story. As The Golden Legend tells it, it runs thus.
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