Beginning in 1474, a campaign of historical decoration was created for the Sala del Maggior Consiglio, the Hall of the Great Council for the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Depicting the city's triumphs of diplomacy and military might in a series of canvases by Giovanni Bellini and other artists, the cycle was destroyed by fire in 1577 and recreated by later hands. This drawing by Vittore Carpaccio is the only surviving evidence of a composition from this cycle.
Born between 1460 and 1466 to a member of the Venetian furrier's guild, Carpaccio was from the 1490s one of the chief Venetian painters of altarpieces and above all cycles of narrative paintings for the city's confraternities. Whether or not he trained with Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, as has been proposed, he collaborated with the latter even after he had been an independent master for over fifteen years. His major narrative cycles, for the Scuola di Sant'Orsola (1490–96), the Scuola degli Schiavoni (1502–08), the Scuola degli Albanesi (c. 1500–1510) and the Scuola di Santo Stefano (1511–20), were renowned for the attention to visual variety, attention to detail, and naturalness of expression.(2) The fact that these were all small confraternities may have contributed to the fact that Carpaccio was chosen to collaborate with Giovanni Bellini in 1507 rather than leading the Sala del Maggior Consiglio project himself. Carpaccio served as part of the committee to evaluate Giorgione's frescoes for the Fondaco de' Tedeschi in 1508. He died between 28 October 1525 and 26 June 1526.
The Crocker drawing confirms Vasari's assessment of Carpaccio as a "molto diligente e pratico maestro."(3) The moment depicted is a key event in Venetian historical mythography, related to the Doge's intercession between pope and emperor in 1177. In the previous year, Frederick I Barbarossa had proclaimed an antipope and banished Alexander III from his lands. Taking refuge in Venice, the pope was received with great honors and Doge Sebastiano Ziani sent a delegation to Barbarossa to negotiate. The eventual result was that the Emperor recognized the pope in a splendid ceremony in San Marco in Venice. In thanks, the Pope gave the Doge dominion over the Adriatic (the origin of the annual wedding to the sea from the bucintoro) and symbols of the latter's equality with the Emperor and himself. These included the papal umbrella bestowed upon the Doge in a ceremony at Ancona, as in the lost painting and the present drawing.(4)
In the scene in the recto drawing in dark brown ink and brown washes, Carpaccio isolates the narrative moment by placing the umbrella and the act of bestowal at the center of an x, formed by the wedge-shaped rows of attendant figures. The hands of pope, doge, and bearer rest upon its handle as the Pope makes a gesture of blessing. The Emperor witnesses this act at left. On the verso, in a much less detailed scene in red chalk and dark brown ink, the artist arranges the scene differently, the principal figures disposed about a semicircle with crowds of attendants radiating behind them in all directions. Though it has been proposed that the verso was used for Carpaccio's canvas on the basis of perceived similarities to its sixteenth-century replacement by Girolamo Gambarata,(5) surely the recto's focus and narrative clarity make it better suited to the subject than the verso, especially since the placement of the umbrella on the latter makes it seem that the Doge bestows it upon the Pope not the other way round.
Stylistically the drawing fits well in Carpaccio's oeuvre, with similarities to figures in a scene for the Scuola degli Schiavoni composed in the same way, the Funeral of Saint Jerome of c. 1502, now in Uppsala.(6) The two monks kneeling at right are studied separately in a drawing now in Chicago.(7) It seems likely that the Crocker recto is close to the scene in the lost final canvas, if the few changes between the Uppsala drawing and the Scuola degli Schiavoni canvas are typical of Carpaccio's working habit.
The drawing, which entered the collection as the work of Carpaccio, was published first by Erika Tietze-Conrat in 1940 and has been connected to the Sala del Maggior Consiglio project from that time. The few doubts about its attribution have stemmed from the assumption that Giovanni Bellini, by contract in charge of the decoration with Carpaccio and others assisting, would have made the compositional drawings, rather than doubts on stylistic grounds.(8) However, the Crocker drawing must represent Carpaccio's studies of the small central section of a larger design, if the differently-proportioned Gambarata painting indicates the original dimensions of the canvas it replaces. A drawing by Carpaccio in the British Museum which bears the seventeenth-century collector Padre Resta's identification as the Port of Ancona may represent another section of the same larger design, as noted by the Tietzes and Popham and Pouncey.(9) Though Pignatti once proposed a date of c. 1500 for the drawing on the basis of style,(10) it seems to this writer most logical to remain with a date of between 1507, when Carpaccio is documented as involved in the Sala del Maggior Consiglio project, and 1511, when his letter to the Marquis of Mantua mentions the completion of the "historia del Ancona."(11)
William Breazeale, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010
Notes:
(1) "Turn the page" in Latin, indicating a double-sided composition.
(2) Luigi Lanzi, Storia pittorica della Italia dal risorgimento delle belle Arti fin presso al fine del XVIII secolo, ed. Martino Capucci, Florence, 1968–74, vol. II, p. 27
(3) Vasari, ed. Milanesi, vol. VIII, p. 642
(4) See Giustina Renier Michiel, Origine delle feste veneziane, Milan, 1829, vol. I, pp. 125-29 for the history related to the Sala del Maggior Consiglio episodes. The historical basis for some of these has been questioned, see Filippo de Vivo, "Historial Justifications of Venetian Power in the Adriatic," in Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. LXIV, no. 2, April 2003, pp. 159–76.
(5) Huse 1972 as in Literature above, p. 66
(6) Lauts 1962 as in Literature above, no. 50
(7) Art Institute of Chicago inv. no. 1962.577R, formerly in the Colville collection. ibidem, no. 31
(8) A note by Wilhelm Suida proposing Giovanni Bellini as author survives on the original mat in Crocker curatorial files. Norbert Huse (1972 as in Literature above, p. 66) proposes Bellini or Carpaccio copying his design.
(9) Tietzes 1944 as in Literature above, under no. 615; Popham and Pouncey as in Literature above, p. 21.
(10) Pignatti 1974 as in Literature above, p. 8
(11) Fortini Brown 1988 as in Literature above, p. 275
Inscriptions: dark brown ink, upper right corner: DV; black chalk, lower margin at right: Verte(1); dark brown ink, lower left corner: Carpaccio (cancelled in graphite); black chalk, lower margin at left: Perugino; verso, dark brown ink, lower left corner: Vittore Carpaccio
Marks: Lugt 2344 (Schumann) llc recto
Provenance: Johann Gottfried Schumann, Dresden, before 1810; Edwin Bryant Crocker, Sacramento, by 1871; gift of his widow Margaret to the Museum, 1885
Literature: William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010, no. 1; William Breazeale, "Old Masters in Old California: the Origins of the Drawings Collection at the Crocker Art Museum," in Master Drawings, vol. XLVI, no. 2, Summer 2008, p. 210; Cornelia Friedrichs, Francesco Guardi, venezianische Feste und Zeremonien, Berlin, 2006, p. 36; Peter Humfrey, Carpaccio, London, 2005, p. 118; Stefania Mason Rinaldi, Carpaccio, the Major Pictorial Cycles, Milan, 2000, p. 9; Jeffrey Ruda, The Art of Drawing, Old Masters from the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California, exh. cat. Flint, 1992, no. 1; Patricia Fortini Brown, Venetian Narrative Painting in the Age of Carpaccio, New Haven and London, 1988, pp. 85-86, 279; Rona Goffen, "Bellini, S. Giobbe and Altar Egos," in Artibus et historiae, vol. VII, no. 14, 1986, p. 64, note 40; Wolfgang Wolters, Der Bilderschmuck des Dogenpalastes, Wiesbaden, 1983, p. 170; Edward Muir, "Images of Power: Art and Pageantry in Renaissance Venice," in The American Historical Review, vol. LXXXIV, no. 1, February, 1979, p. 25; Michelangelo Muraro, I disegni di Vittore Carpaccio, Florence, 1977, pp. 76–77; Terisio Pignatti, Venetian Drawings from American Collections, exh. cat. Washington, 1974, no. 5; Christopher White, review of Master Drawings from Sacramento, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 1971, in Master Drawings, vol. X, no. 2, Summer 1972, p. 167; Terisio Pignatti, Vittore Carpaccio, Milan, 1972, pp. 18, 21, 22; Norbert Huse, Studien zu Giovanni Bellini, Berlin, 1972, p. 70; Master Drawings from Sacramento, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 1971, no. 8, p. 3; Jürgen Schultz, Master Drawings from California Collections, exh. cat. Berkeley, 1968, no. 32; Guido Perocco, Opera completa del Carpaccio, Milan, 1967, p. 104; Michelangelo Muraro, Carpaccio, Florence, 1966, pp. 10, 68, 82; Crocker Art Gallery, Catalogue of the Collections, Sacramento, 1964, p. 54; Terisio Pignatti, review of Jan Lauts, Carpaccio, 1962, in Master Drawings, vol. I, no. 4, Winter 1963, p. 49–50; Michelangelo Muraro, Treasures of Venice, Geneva, 1963, p. 140; Jan Lauts, Carpaccio, London, 1962, no. 49, p. 277; Giuseppe Fiocco, Carpaccio, Novara, 1958, no. 8 p. 35; Russell Bohr, The Italian Drawings in the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery Collection, Sacramento, California, unpubl. Ph.D. diss, University of California at Berkeley, 1958, no. 34; Edoardo Arslan, "Due disegni e un dipinto di Carpaccio," in Emporio, no. 116, 1952, p. 109; A. E. Popham and Philip Pouncey, Italian Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, British Museum Catalogues, London, 1950, under no. 33; Hans Tietze and Erika Tietze-Conrat, The Drawings of the Venetian Painters of the 15th and 16th Centuries, New York, 1944, no. 635 and p. 143; Numa S. Trivas, "Lesser Known American Art Collections. I. The E. B. Crocker Art Gallery of Sacramento, California, U.S.A.," in Apollo, vol. IV, December 1940, p. 137; Erika Tietze-Contrat, "Decorative Paintings of the Venetian Renaissance," in The Art Quarterly, vol. III, 1940, pp. 20–21
