To say Vittore Carpaccio is to say Venice. That proud lion, symbol of the Serenissima, immediately comes to mind, andante with two paws on the mainland and two paws in the water of the lagoon, witness of the dominion over the seas and inland territories. Behind the lion you can see Piazza San Marco, the islands, the sailing ships.
All enclosed there, in that large canvas of 1516, is the mythology of Venice, the sumptuous spectacle of the Republic which at the time was truly a European power at its economic and cultural apogee.
Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1465 – 1525 or 1526) was the painter who better than anyone else managed to tell the dream of Venice, the aura of the Serenissima between fantasy and reality, a master in describing delicate details and moments of everyday life so such as solemn ceremonies and mass scenes.
The first major monograph dedicated to Carpaccio dates back to 1963: at the Doge’s Palace in Venice, curated by the art historian Pietro Zampetti. An exhibition that made history, so much so that it inspired Giuseppe Cipriani to baptize with the name of the painter what would become one of the most famous dishes of his Harry’s Bar. Suddenly Carpaccio became a “pop” painter, his monograph entered the homes of Italians in the series best sellers of “The masters of color” and “The classics of art”.
Ducal Palace
Sixty years have gone by since then and Palazzo Ducale once again hosts Vittore Carpaccio with a new major retrospective which has the ambition of giving the painter a new, less obvious reading, also on the basis of recent revealing restorations and the discovery of some significant unpublished works.
National Gallery di Washington
The collaboration with Washington “Vittore Carpaccio”. Paintings and drawings”, on display in the Doge’s Apartment until 18 June 2023, is promoted by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia in collaboration with the National Gallery in Washington. The curatorship of the project was entrusted to Peter Humfrey, one of the leading scholars of Carpaccio, with Andrea Bellieni, curator of the Civic Museums of Venice, and Gretchen Hirschauer, curator of Italian and Spanish painting at the National Gallery in Washington. Until last February 12 the great exhibition was hosted in Washington with great public success, as had already happened for the exhibition dedicated to Jacopo Tintoretto three years ago. The fortunate collaboration is now proposed again in this exhibition which brings together works by Carpaccio from international museums and collections and from churches in the ancient territories of the Serenissima, from Lombardy to Istria and Dalmatia.