Carpaccio 's first major cycle was the Life of St. Ursula, a sequence of nine paintings commissioned in 1488, and now in the gallery of the Academy of Venice, as it was in Ruskin's time. The story of the life and death of St. Ursula echoes Ruskin's relationship with Rose la Touche, to whom he proposed marriage in 1866, and who died in 1875; their relationship could only be completed in heaven. St. Ursula consented to marriage only if her conditions were met. Making the pilgrimage which was one her conditions led to her martyrdom and her apotheosis.