Holy Family with Saints

Vittore Carpaccio

Summary

A reproduction produced by the Vasari Society of a drawing by Vittore Carpaccio. The drawing shows a group of figures in an unidentifiable setting. There appears to be a long bench running across the composition, and there are two trees: one in the right foreground and one in the left middle ground. Just to the left of centre, there is a woman - whom we assume to be the Virgin Mary - sitting on the bench. To the left a child is sitting against the tree with his head turned towards the left; a man standing, holding onto the tree and a kneeling woman with another infant are to the left of the child. Another man with a stick is holding on to the tree against the right edge of the composition. A woman with a wreath of flowers is sitting on the bench to the right of the Virgin Mary and with her back towards the viewer; she has another standing man beside her. Text from the accompanying booklet produced by the Vasari Society: "No. 7 VITTORE CARPACCIO (b. about 1455-6; d. between 1524 and 1527) HOLY FAMILY WITH SAINTS Collections of the Hon. A. E. Gathorne-Hardy (from the Richardson, Westcombe and Malcolm Collections). Pen and bistre. 13.8 x 23.5 cm. (5 7/16 x 9 1/4 in.) Somewhat to the left of the centre the Virgin sits nearly in full face on a long stone seat or low wall. A little apart from her towards the left, on a drapery spread upon the wall, sits the Child Christ, looking round and down at the little St. John, who runs in from the left. To his left kneels a female saint, with flowing hair or veil. An aged saint with a long beard, standing in full face high behind St. John, leans with his left arm in the fork of a slender bare tree. To the right of the Virgin sits a female saint (St. Dorothy?), holding a bunch of flowers on her lap; she is turned away from the spectator, but looks half round towards the Virgin and Child: beside her, beyond the parapet, stands a second bearded saint; a third approaches from lower ground on the right, helping himself up by a crutch and the fork of a tree. The group, composed in a charming idyllic spirit and touched with great dexterity in Carpaccio's characteristic manner of short crisp strokes with a broad pen, has a general but by no means exact resemblance to that in a picture by the master of the same subject, which came with the Campana Collection to the Louvre and is now in the provincial museum at Caen. ... S. C."