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Vittore Carpaccio: Renaissance Storyteller

A young woman sits outside facing our left reading a book. She has pale skin and wears a red and orange gown with her hair covered by a turban.
Vittore Carpaccio, The Virgin Reading, c. 1505, oil on panel transferred to canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.354

Welcome back to A Long Look! I’m so glad to be back and with a real treat! I’ll be spending Season 7 bringing you highlights from Vittore Carpaccio: Master Storyteller of Renaissance Venice, a major exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. 

Carpaccio was an innovative visual storyteller at a time when Venice was a major power and the main crossroads between East and West. He specialized in enormous, colorful scenes of religious stories that would be displayed in order around the walls of a public room where a viewer would walk through them, like a life-size movie.

Carpaccio isn’t as well known here as some of his fellow Renaissance artists, like Titian, so it’s exciting to meet him in his first-ever retrospective outside Italy! Plus, we get to see a reunited artwork that was split in half 400 years ago, and learn about a hidden Jesus!

The exhibition opened on Nov. 20 and runs through Feb. 12, 2023. Check out https://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2022/carpaccio-renaissance-venice.html for more info.

New episodes start soon!

SHOW NOTES

“A Long Look” theme is “Ascension” by Ron Gelinas

“Gabrieli Canzon per sonar primi toni a 8, Ch. 170.” Performed by James Howard Young 

https://musopen.org/music/43294-canzon-per-sonar-primi-toni-a-8-ch-170/


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