Vittore Carpaccio

Carpaccio was an Italian painter of the Venetian school, who studied under Gentile Bellini (1429 – 1507). He is best known for a cycle of nine paintings, called The Legend of Saint Ursula for the Venetian Scuola and now in the Accademia of Venice. He was influenced by the style of Antonello da Messina (1430 – 1479) and Early Netherlandish art. For this reason, and also because so much of his best work remains in Venice, his art has been rather neglected by comparison with other Venetian contemporaries.

Carpaccio’s large scenes of Venetian city life give some of the best impressions of the city at the height of its power and wealth, and a strong sense of the civic pride of its citizens. In other paintings he shows a sense of fantasy that seems to look back to medieval romance, rather than sharing in the pastoral vision of the next generation.

Of his works now in the Uffizi Gallery are Soldiers and men in Oriental Clothes, Sybil, and Prophet.

(Some of this text is taken from the www.wikipedia.org entry on Vittore Carpaccio available under GNU Free Documentation License)