Vittore Carpaccio (Venice, c. 1465–1525/1526)

Birth of Mary

c. 1502-1504

Oil on canvas, 128,5 Å~ 127,5 cm

Bergamo, Accademia Carrara, inv. 81 LC 00235

Apocryphal signature at bottom right: VICTOR CARPATIVS Vs. FACEBAT

Visitation

c. 1502-1504

Oil on canvas, 128 Å~ 137 cm

Venice, Galleria Giorgio Franchetti alla Ca’ d’Oro, inv. d.215

(formerly Venice, Museo Correr, inv. 47)

The paintings belong to a cycle originally comprising six episodes in the life of the Virgin inspired by the Legenda Aurea, painted by Carpaccio in Venice for the Scuola degli Albanesi, which had chosen the Virgin as their community’s patron saint. The confraternity had been founded in 1442 and grew in opposition to the similar Scuola degli Schiavoni, both serving as meeting places for two different groups of refugees, immigrants driven from the Adriatic shore by the advancing Turks. Work began on construction of the premises of the Albanians in 1497 and it was completed in 1502. It is curious, however, that the rectors of the two institutions almost simultaneously commissioned the same painter, Carpaccio, to decorate the interiors of their principal chambers, although it must be admitted that the series in the Scuola degli Schiavoni, painted in about 1502, consists of works that are much larger, more numerous and more spectacular.

It seems likely, at any rate, that the artist immediately started work, as soon as the building was complete, on the first episode in the cycle, with the Birth of Mary, followed by The Presentation in the Temple, The Marriage of the Virgin, The Annunciation, The Visitation and The Death of Mary. The paintings are now divided between the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Ca’ d’Oro in Venice (where the paintings of The Annunciation and The Death of Mary returned in 1919, having been moved to the Academy in Vienna in 1838) and the Museo Correr in Venice, which had the Visitation, now also in the Ca’ d’Oro. Since it is quite likely that the scenes were painted in narrative sequence, and since the only canvas dated is The Annunciation of 1504 (in the Ca’ d’Oro; dated MCCCCIIII del mese d’april), we can assume that the other paintings were completed after 1502 and before or around 1504.

In The Birth of Mary, the interior of the house is depicted in detail, with Saint Anne resting in her bed observed at a distance by old Joachim, standing almost in a corner, clearly overawed by the bustling of the women engaged in various tasks: notably giving the baby her first bath, preparing the swaddling bands to dress her, taking the first bowl of broth to the new mother and, in the background, drying clothes before the fireplace and dressing game for roasting.

What is most surprising is the complex scenography of the interiors, carefully depicted in their elegant decor and with unusual details: the Hebrew inscription hung on the wall, the various household items arranged on the shelf, the two rabbits (symbols of fertility and, by contrast, of Mary’s virginal motherhood), the display of dishes high up in the kitchen, and in general the arrangement of the rooms to form a long vista opening at the end into a courtyard, at the far end of which appears a door set in an outer wall. Among the many charming details that break up the unity of action of the narrative almost into a sequence of surprises, which the viewer follows with curiosity, we notice the fine carpet on which the figure in the foreground is sitting, so apparently natural and depicted from life.

This is an idea that the painter must have reflected on carefully, since it is found on a larger scale and finished more carefully in the fragment with the coeval or slightly later picture of The Virgin Reading, now in Washington (National Gallery of Art). And perhaps a second carpet (but we cannot be sure) appears hanging on the back wall of the room, behind the figure of the servant bringing the first bowl of broth to the mother. The rug depicted in the foreground, and also the other one, if it is a carpet, have a central field of a bright green color, adorned at the corners with stylized twisted flower clusters and a border decorated with geometrical patterns. In the one in the foreground a few star motifs can also be seen. It cannot be immediately identified by comparison with ancient carpets known today, but certainly the border of the carpet under the seated figure, with its decorative pattern of cruciform star motifs, resembles the thirteenth-century Seljuk carpet preserved in Istanbul (Türk ve Islam Eserleri Müzesi), while the large kaleidoscopic star-patterns are those we find in Ushak star pattern rugs in western Anatolia, though accompanied by stylized rinceaux, rather pointing towards Persian culture.

In the Visitation, however, the carpets are found in a completely different context, since the scene is set out of doors in an imaginary landscape with an Oriental city surrounded by turreted walls. Just as in The Birth of Mary there was a marked effort to make the interior of a Jewish home credible, so here Carpaccio lavishes great care on the depiction of many other details that make us immediately aware of the setting: the figures in turbans, the palm trees, the walls that resemble those we know today from the Kremlin, but that must have been based on the walls of ancient Constantinople. Everything comes together to tell us that we are in the East, partly seen and partly reinvented. And contributing to this setting are the many carpets, at least eight, hung over the balustrades of the two long balconies on the façade of the large building – Venetian Renaissance in style, to tell the truth – which forms the sumptuous gateway in the walls. Not perfectly recognizable in their minute proportions, the carpets seem here to be mostly of the “Ushak” star carpet type and perhaps a “Holbein” large pattern type (third from the left in the lower row). They are displayed on the buildings in keeping with custom of marking special events and celebrations that Venice had borrowed from the East, and which we find depicted in several paintings by Carpaccio and other Venetian painters.