The life and times of the saint are used as the pretext for an idealised depiction of 15th century Venice involving crowds of superbly realised people in exquisite clothes with wonderful architecture in the background. In these celebrated works he emerged as a mature artist of originality,revealing a gift for organization, narrative skill,and a masterly command of light.

Carpaccio was the greatest early Renaissance narrative painter of the Venetian school - and this illuminating study by Peter Humfrey ably demonstrates the truth of this statement.Little is known of Vittore Carpaccio's early life only that he was born sometime between 1455 and 1460. He is believed to have been a pupil of Lazzaro Bastiani, but the dominant influences on his early work were those of Gentile Bellini and Antonello da Messina. His first known works do not appear until 1490, the date on one of the canvases in the cycle illustrating the legend of St.Ursula for the Scuola di Santa Orsola in Venice.The life and times of the saint are used as the pretext for an idealised depiction of 15th century Venice involving crowds of superbly realised people in exquisite clothes with wonderful architecture in the background. In these celebrated works he emerged as a mature artist of originality,revealing a gift for organization, narrative skill,and a masterly command of light.Subsequently he completed three further narrative cycles. The first of these, executed between 1502 and 1507 and consisting of nine scenes that are mainly from the lives of Saint George and Saint Jerome, survives intact in the Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni in Venice and is considered to represent the climax of Carpaccio's art.Carpaccio died some time between 1523 and 1525 and was subsequently neglected for many centuries. He was rediscovered in the 19th century, when his precise rendering of architecture and the luminous atmosphere of his paintings were praised by the English critic John Ruskin. Now this superbly illustrated volume by Peter Humfrey confirms Carpaccio's unique place in the pantheon of great artists.