CARPACCIO, Vittore
(b. 1472, Venezia, d. 1526, Capodistria)

The Visitation

1504-06
Oil on canvas, 128 x 137 cm
Galleria Franchetti, Ca' d'Oro, Venice

This panel is part of a cycle Stories of the Virgin, originally painted for the Scuola degli Albanesi, the confraternity of the Albanian community. The paintings were removed from their original location in 180 and are now dispersed between the Academia Carrara, Bergamo, the Brera in Milan, and the Ca' d'Oro, Venice.

In this painting in his representation of buildings and accessories, Carpaccio adopts a characteristic mixture of specific allusion and poetic imagination. The turbaned figures in the middleground, the displays of oriental rugs on the balconies, the palm trees, and the minaret-like towers in the left background, all reflect a widespread Venetian interest in the Near East in this period; and by including them, Carpaccio clearly also intended to evoke the specific flavour of the Holy Land.