I don’t remember exactly when I first visited the Scuola degli Schiavoni. But I do remember the emotion.
Walking in felt like falling into history.
In the small hall, with its wooden ceilings and wainscoting along the walls, Carpaccio’s canvases appeared like a fairytale frieze.
Darkened by time and poorly lit, yet never had I felt so strongly the presence of a world reaching out from the distant past.
The Dalmatians
Today renamed the Scuola Dalmata di San Giorgio e San Trifone, the Scuola degli Schiavoni was a charitable and solidarity institution for the many Dalmatians living in Venice.
The connection with Dalmatia, the region on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, had ancient origins, preceding even the political bond formed when it became part of the Republic’s Stato da Mar. Since the 11th century, in fact, the waterfront in front of the Doge’s Palace, where Dalmatian merchants docked and sold their goods, had been called the Riva degli Schiavoni.
In the intimate space of Scuola, which represented the Dalmatian community, Carpaccio brought to life a pictorial cycle that is both narrative and poetic.
St. George
The three canvases on the left recount the legend of Saint George, the archetype of the many wandering knights in our literature and a virtuous Christian soldier.
While near the city of Silene, the saint spots a young woman—a princess—offered to the voracious dragon that held the city hostage and constantly demanded new victims. Without hesitation, Saint George engages in battle with the monster to save the princess.
In the second canvas, Saint George drags the dragon, wounded but still alive, to the main square of Silene. Perhaps he already had an agreement in mind with the king. In fact, only after securing the king’s promise to convert to Christianity does the dragon meet its final end, killed before the crowd that witnesses the power of the Christian warrior.
In the third canvas, the king and his daughter, kneeling before Saint George, receive baptism from his very hands.
Carpaccio thus selects three episodes from the legend, but through each of them, he tells us much more: palmette-patterned fabrics, leaves, and flowers of Byzantine, Moorish, or Chinese origin; musicians always present at important celebrations; Christian and Islamic architecture. He shows us the king, ready to offer his daughter in marriage to the hero; a flustered servant; crowds of onlookers, plants, and birds.
Through these details, so familiar to his contemporaries, Carpaccio tells the story of Venice itself and its inhabitants.
Carpaccio has been called a painter-narrator. We might also call him a storyteller, because for every scene one could compose a stanza and read it aloud.
Some see in Carpaccio the skill of a film director staging long takes. Yet, within the multiplicity of details and stories present in each canvas, at the center dominates a still image.
If we take the first episode, the most striking element is the red lance wielded by the knight, delivering his blow with a movement from right to left.
Behind the saint, we see the princess and a church atop a hill, along with other Christian symbols. Behind the dragon, instead, we recognize a Saracen city with a minaret.
Ereo and Ursula: the Betrothed
There is another work by Carpaccio where a single detail captures a universal moment: it is the meeting between Orsola and Ereo, in the Sant’Orsola cycle at the Gallerie dell’Accademia.
The princess of Brittany agrees to marry the son of the king of England, provided he converts to Christianity. After the ambassadors have made the arrangements, Ereo travels to Brittany. The two young spouses see each other for the first time. We find them, almost a detail within the enormous canvas teeming with figures. They look alike: beautiful, blonde, noble, dressed in precious garments, completely unaware of the tragic fate that awaits them. In the exchange of their first glances, they recognize each other: they are made for one another.
The intensity of their resemblance, alluding to the union of two souls into one body, had already been sung a few centuries earlier in the legend of Tristan and Isolde. It is the story of a prince and a princess who, by accident, drink a love potion. To love one another, they break all the rules of honor and propriety—but that’s how it is: against magic, one cannot resist.
In Venice, the legend was very popular, thanks to the trovatori, wandering poets who recited it in the city’s campi, drawing captivated audiences who listened, sighing. I like to imagine that, one day, among them was Carpaccio himself, and that the poet’s verses never left him:
A man, a woman; a woman, a man:
Tristan, Isolde; Isolde, Tristan.
Here, in this play of exchanged names and words, the poet weaves the fate of the two noble lovers, who, reflecting one another, become a single essence.
Carpaccio, a painter of stories, knew how to give shape to the deepest and most universal of emotions.
