St. Ursula's dream
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| St. Ursula's dream |
|---|
| Vittore Carpaccio , 1495 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 267 × 274 cm |
| Accademia , Venice |
The Dream of St. Ursula (Sogno di Sant'Orsola) is a painting by Vittore Carpaccio from the late 15th century. It is part of the Ursula cycle about the life of Saint Ursula , which is considered as Carpaccio's main work. The nine paintings are now in a separate room in the Accademia in Venice (Room XXI).
Client and creation
The order for the nine large panel paintings was placed on November 16, 1488 by the "Scuola di Sant'Orsola" brotherhood, which had existed since 1300 , without the name Carpaccios being mentioned in the contract. Carpaccio began work on the cycle 1490 or 1491 and it would take, with a few interruptions, until 1496 to complete it; According to another source, the work lasted until 1500. In an interruption in 1494 he created the painting Healing of the possessed for the Scuola di San Giovanni Evangelista . The painting about the dream of St. Ursula is dated to 1495.
As was customary at the time, Carpaccio might have specified the motifs and compositions himself and also participated in the actual execution or coordinated the work to be done by the assistants, because he had, such as B. also Gentile Bellini , about a large number of assistants.
The image, the whole cycle belong to the genre of Teleri , named after a loom (in Venetian dialect Telero similar) wooden structure, with the pictures on the walls of Scuole were installed. It is also considered the calmest of the otherwise rather dramatic representations of the cycle. It is the sixth painting in the sequence of the cycle. The cycle was intended for the Scuola chapel in the converted rooms next to the Dominican Church of San Zanipolo in Venice.
The motif
The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine after was the Saint Ursula a princess of royal Breton House. After an engagement with an English prince, she wanted to go on a pilgrimage to Rome before the actual wedding should take place. After the reception and the blessing by the Pope , an angel appeared to her in a dream, who announced her upcoming martyrdom . It is this passage in the tradition that the painting represents. According to legend, the saint and the 11,000 virgins allegedly accompanying her ultimately suffered their martyrdom on their return journey in Cologne .
The representation
The image is designed with a central perspective , the vanishing point is slightly to the right of the central image axis. It's unclear where the scene will take place. According to one source, the saint of angels appears already in Rome itself, according to another the prediction does not occur until Cologne. The scene is supposed to take place in the early morning, the incidence of light from the right behind the angel is designed accordingly. The interior of the room itself is a typical bedchamber in Venice in the 15th century. The room is only sparsely furnished, apart from the four-poster bed there is only a stool, a small table and a bookcase. On the wall behind the sleeping saint is a small altar with a candle in a holder and a small vessel for the holy water . Antique-looking statuettes are placed above the lintels. The walls are broken through by round-arched twin windows underneath round windows. The saint herself sleeps calmly, the face is depicted relaxed and peaceful.
He paid special attention to small details, in the richness of detail and the natural representation typical of Carpaccio, such as in this picture on the saint's shoes in front of the bed or the crown as an attribute of her royal origin at the bottom of the bed. The little dog at the bottom of the picture is a motif that Carpaccio often uses to bring a form of everyday life into a sacred event. The two plants in the vase and the tub on the windowsill represent myrtle and carnation , the first a symbolic representation of love, the other that of honor .
As in many of Carpaccio's paintings, the basic coloring in this painting is amber-reddish, which is typical for the lighting conditions in Venice.
Hugh Honor commented on this picture: Many a Venetian bedroom may have looked like that of the Saints, albeit without the crown at the foot of the bed. But here we feel something more than just realistic naturalness. This is less an image of a room than an image of light and air flowing into a room. Carpaccio was fascinated by the problem of the painterly rendering of light and color. And in reproducing the peculiarity of the Venetian light, he has only one rival - Canaletto .
literature
- Will Durant: The Splendor and Decay of the Italian Renaissance . Volume 8 from Will and Ariel Durant: Cultural History of Mankind. 1st edition, Südwest Verlag, Munich 1978, ISBN 3-517-00562-2 .
- Hugh Honor: Venice - A Guide. 2nd edition, Prestel Verlag, Munich 1973.
- Ines Kehl: Vittore Carpaccio's cycle of Ursula legends from the “Scuola di Sant'Orsola” in Venice. A Venetian illusion. Worms 1992. (= manuscripts of art history 36.)
- Pompeo Molmenti : The Life and Works of Vittore Carpaccio. London 1907. Chapter 4: The History of the Scuola di Sant'Orsola. Chapter V. Carpaccios Paintings. Full text
- Corrado Ricci: History of Art in Northern Italy. 2nd edition, Julius Hoffmann Verlag, Stuttgart 1924.
- Max Semrau: The Art of the Renaissance in Italy and in the North . 3rd edition, Vol. III from Wilhelm Lübke: Grundriss der Kunstgeschichte. 14th edition, Paul Neff Verlag, Esslingen 1912.
- Herbert Alexander Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance . DuMont's library of great painters, DuMont Buchverlag, Cologne 1979, ISBN 3-7701-1118-4 .
- Rolf Toman (Ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing. Tandem Verlag, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-8331-4582-7 .
- Felix Türlemann: The Ursula Cycle by Vittore Carpaccio. Constance 2002. ( online )
- Robert E. Wolf and Ronald Millen: Birth of the Modern Age. Kunst im Bild series, Naturalis Verlag, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-88703-705-7 .
- Stefano Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces. DuMont Buchverlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8321-9113-9 .
Web links
- Pictures of the Ursula cycle at heiligenlexikon.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing. P. 362
- ↑ http://www.uni-konstanz.de/FuF/Philo/LitWiss/KunstWiss/forschung/carpaccio/carpaccio2.2.htm
- ^ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing. P. 362
- ↑ Honor: Venice - A Guide. P. 190.
- ^ Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing. P. 362
- ↑ Durant: Splendor and Decay of the Italian Renaissance. P. 71
- ↑ Semrau: The Art of the Renaissance in Italy and in the North. P. 242.
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. P. 138; Toman (ed.): The art of the Italian Renaissance - architecture, sculpture, painting, drawing. P. 362.
- ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces. P. 198
- ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces. P. 198
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. P. 138
- ↑ Honor: Venice - A Guide. P. 190.
- ↑ Location of the school and arrangement of the cycle ( Memento of the original from April 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (litwiss.uni-konstanz.de) accessed on January 20, 2013
- ↑ Durant: Splendor and Decay of the Italian Renaissance. P. 70
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. P. 138
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. P. 138
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. P. 138.
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. P. 138.
- ↑ Durant: Splendor and Decay of the Italian Renaissance. Pp. 70/71
- ^ Zuffi: The Renaissance - Art, Architecture, History, Masterpieces. P. 201/202.
- ^ Stützer: Painting of the Italian Renaissance. P. 138
- ↑ Wolf / Millen: Birth of the Modern Age. P.56
- ↑ Honor: Venice - A Guide , p. 191
