Vittore Carpaccio Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Vittore Carpaccio was of the Venetian school and studied under Gentile Bellini. His style was somewhat conservative, showing little influence from the Humanist patterns that transformed Italian Renaissance painting during his lifetime. Antonello da Messina and Early Netherlandish art both influenced him.

His chief works were executed between 1490 and 1519, ranking him among the early masters of the Venetian Renaissance. After entering the Humanist circles of Venice, he changed his family name to Carpaccio. Vittore Carpaccio was a student of Lazzaro Bastiani, who, like Giovanni Bellini and Bartolomeo Vivarini, was the head of an extensive workshop in Venice.

The only Reproduction of the Interior of a Venetian home.

The cycle for the School of Saint Ursula is the most famous series of paintings by Carpaccio. Here, St Ursula's Dream an angel holding the martyr's palm leaf steps into the bedroom where Ursula sleeps, bringing into her dream the announcement of her imminent death. The objects and furnishings in the sleeping saint's room are depicted with poignant, tender care. This is one of the only existing faithful reproductions of the interior of a wealthy Venetian home at the end of the fifteenth century.

Continuing with Stories from the life of St. Ursula, the skillful combination of real and fantastic elements gives credibility to the enchanting setting, a fairy tale Venice, where the bittersweet adventures of Princess Ursula take place.

In the opening decade of the sixteenth century, Vittore Carpaccio embarked on the works that have since awarded him the distinction as the foremost Orientalist painter of his age. From 1502-1507 Carpaccio executed another outstanding series of panels for the Slavs immigrant Scuola di San Giorgio Degli Schiavoni. Not at all like the outdated utilization of a constant story sequence found in the St. Ursula arrangement, wherein the fundamental characters appear many times inside each canvas, each work in the Schiavoni series focuses on a solitary scene in the lives of the Dalmatian's three Patron Saints: St. Jerome, St. George and St. Trifon.

At about the same time, from 1501– to 1507, he worked in the Doge's Palace, together with Giovanni Bellini, in decorating the Hall of the Great Council. Like many other major works, the cycle was lost in the disastrous fire of 1577.

Art Movement History: Renaissance, Venetian school.
Artists Influencing Vittore Carpaccio: Giovanni Bellini, Antonello da Messina, Lazzaro Bastiani.
Painters Vittore Carpaccio Influenced: Marco Marziale.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.