l INTRODUCTION

turned to Carpaccio to paint the legend of the saint for the adornment of its school. These pictures increased the fame of the Guild, and they are described by Ridolfi in his Wonders of Art (1648). Carpaccio, we may be sure, would study the legend of St. Ursula closely in executing such a commission.¹ Among the principal benefactors of the school were the great Loredan family, and Carpaccio introduced their portraits. In 1647 the Guild built itself a new school, and several of the pictures were chopped off in order to fit their new places. In 1752 the pictures were repainted. In 1810 Napoleon suppressed the Confraternity.

The legend of St. Ursula, which it is necessary to know in order to understand Carpaccio’s pictures, is told in Fors Clavigera, Letter 71.

If the reader will refer to that account he will then easily follow the order of the pictures, as Ruskin arranges them in his Guide to the Academy² and as may here be recapitulated:-

1. Arrival of the Ambassadors of the King of England at the court of Maurus (or, according to other accounts, Theonotus), King of Brittany, to ask the hand of Ursula, his daughter, in marriage to Conon, son of their King.-This is No. 572 in the Academy, and is shown on Plate XLVII. in this volume. The picture has been restored; formerly there was a blank space, cut out as it were of the picture, on account of the door-head which led into the sacristy. Ruskin notices this picture in the Guide (p. 116), and in one of his Oxford catalogues (see Vol. XXI. p. 201). The picture is divided into three compartments. On the left is a Venetian portico, in the Early Renaissance style. The Senator at the bottom is Pietro Loredano; the young man above, with his falcon, is his brother Giorgio. This was the first picture of the series, and Carpaccio gives the benefactors of the school a place of honour. In the second compartment the ambassadors are having audience of the King. In the third, King Maurus is seen reflecting anxiously on the marriage of his daughter with a Pagan prince, while she, fired with the hope of converting him to the Christian faith, is exhorting her father to accept the proposal. At the foot is Ursula’s old nurse, a figure which must have suggested to Titian the old

¹ Those who desire to see how the pictures can be stripped of all meaning, other than of a technical character, should refer to Mr. Berenson’s Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, 1894, p. 25.

² The order of the pictures, as originally placed on the walls of the school, was different. Over the altar was the apotheosis (9 in our list). Then, on the left wall, nearest to the altar (with the door-head into the sacristy), No. 1; next, smaller in size, No. 3; next, No. 4. Then, on the wall of entrance, came the longest picture of the series, No. 5. On the right-hand wall, nearest to the entrance, Nos. 2 and 6 (which Signor Molmenti calls accordingly “The Dream” and “Its Accomplishment”); next, No. 7; and finally, No. 8.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]