Back in the 1980s Jane and I went to Venice for a week in late September, staying on the Lido in a very pleasant hotel just five minutes or so walk from the vaporetto (water bus) stop. 

Each morning - after a leisurely breakfast - we would make the 20-30 minute trip towards Venice proper. Each time, it seemed, the weather was different, ranging from a dazzling blue sky, via gentle drizzle or light mist and on to a deep fog from which the clock tower of San Marco eventually emerged.  And then we would set off on foot, clutching our favourite guide book to that great city: “Venice For Pleasure” by the delightful J.G. Links.

Venice for pleasure, you will note: not for duty. To show what I mean, here is a quotation from page 103 (of the 1984 revised edition) where he has just taken us to a delightful cafe over the bridge from the Frari.   “When we are refreshed”, he says

we must seriously consider going back to the Scuola S. Rocco and examining its Tintorettos, which made it, in Ruskin’s opinion, one of the three most precious buildings in the world - bracketed with the Sistine Chapel and the Campo Santo of Pisa.  We may well be asked on our return what we thought of these Tintorettos and it would be unthinkable to visit Venice without seeing them. Never let it be said that I suggested such a thing. I only point out that the stairs are steep, the pictures, though wonderful, profuse and that they will still be there tomorrow, and, indeed, on our next visit to Venice.

In fact we never did visit the Scuola S. Rocco on that, my first trip to Venice.   But at least I had seen the occasional Tintoretto, being familiar with his work at the National Gallery, which my mother had first taken me to when I was 8 or 9. (I recall being intrigued and unsettled by ‘The Origin of the Milky Way’ on one of those early visits).

And the same venue introduced me to works by other great Venetian artists, notably:

“Doge Leonardo Loredan” by Giovanni Bellini.

“The Dream of Saint Helena” by Paolo Veronese. (Venetian by adoption)

“Bacchus and Ariadne” by Titian.

“The Annunciation with St Emidius” by Carlo Crivelli, and

“The Stonemasons’ Yard”, by Canaletto.

But it took Mr Links to make me aware of the wittiest and most amiable of Venetian painters, Vittore Carpaccio;  for his Walk number 1 took us to the Accademia, which contains - in room XX1 - Carpaccio’s marvellous series based on the life on Saint Ursula (see detail at top, and click below for access to the full series).

1. •The Stories from the Life of St Ursula (1490-96)
   

(Note that the Canaletto painting above looks over towards a church which - minus its campanile - is now the Accademia Museum).

These paintings had originally been commissioned for the Scuola di sant’Orsola to celebrate their patron saint. The italian word scuola (scuole in the plural) is cognate with school, which is what it means nowadays.  But back when most scuole were founded, they were confraternities or guilds, often formed by religious or professional groups or bringing together non-Venetians:  inhabitants of Milan, Florence or Bergamo, for example; or foreigners such as Greeks, Albanians, Dalmatians or Jews.

And it was one of these ‘national’ scuole which forms the highlight of Mr Links’s second walk: the Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (i.e. ‘slavs’), also known as the Scuola Dalmata, or Dalmatian Guild. Now just as Saint Ursula, not surprisingly, was the patron saint of the Scuola named in her honour, so the Dalmatians asked Carpaccio to honour their own patron saint, San Giorgio, or ‘Saint George’ as he is better know to us.

(Those zealously patriotic English people who think that he belongs exclusively to them should be aware that the saint is equally venerated throughout the Protestant, Catholic, Eastern and Oriental Orthodox churches from Lithuania to Lebanon, Portugal to Palestine, and in cities from Barcelona to Beirut!).

But my favourite saint in this particular Scuola is not George but Jerome, he who (as in the legend of Androcles, eventually dramatised by Shaw,) removed a thorn from the paw of a lion who, thereafter, served him like a faithful dog.   

However his fellow monks, not ready to believe how tame the creature was, fled in all directions. (Click on the link below to get a larger view of this delightful painting, and of all the others in the scuola).

                     Cycle in the San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (1502-07)

The last of the nine paintings in the series is now generally known as “The Vision of St Augustine”.   Our Mr Links, however, refuses to believe that it represents anyone other than St Jerome.

The cause of Truth obliges me to refer briefly to the fact that there is a movement on foot to call this picture The Vision of St. Augustine instead of what everyone knows it to be, St. Jerome in his Study.  Such arguments are used as that the mitre in the foreground must belong to a bishop and St. Jerome never was a bishop; also (a little more plausibly, I fear) that the lion is absent and St. Jerome would not have had a dog in his study.  Nevertheless I pass over this new attempt by art historians to deprive us of our most cherished traditions with the contempt it deserves.

(Among these ‘art historians’ is Andrew Graham-Dixon whose article on the painting - click here - seems to explain what is going on in a more than reasonable way).

Whoever the painting represents, we at least have the pleasure of one of Carpaccio’s nicest dogs: a Maltese, according to one source, “possibly an early form of spaniel, an intelligent breed historically associated with nobility and the elite of society” according to another, gazing over towards its master.

In fact, much of the pleasure of Carpaccio’s work resides in the incidental details: the fact that everything, including weasels, deer and peacocks, joins the monks in their flight from St Jerome’s placid-looking lion; the turban nonchalantly discarded by one of the orientals about to be christened by St George (in “The Baptism of the Selenites”) and sharing centre stage in the foreground of the painting with a greyhound and a parrot; the four splendid greyhounds posing elegantly for their masters (as the crowds await the “Arrival of the English Ambassadors)  contrasting with an errant black dog lingering somewhat shiftily at the water’s edge.

It was, indeed, our wish to examine again such tiny details that, two weeks ago, made us hasten back to the Scuola San Giorgio degli Schiavoni just two hours before we were due to leave Venice after an action-packed five days of visits to various great palaces, some not normally open to the public.  Thank you, J.G. Links, for introducing us to such a great painter, and thanks, also, to John Foster (our invaluable tour manager) for giving up part of his lunch break to show us the quickest way from Rialto to the Scuola.

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The main reason why Carpaccio is not better known is that much of his output consisted of four series of paintings which he produced for four different Venetian scuole.  In addition to those mentioned above they include:

1504-1510    A series of paintings with scenes from the life of the

                      Virgin for the Scuola degli Albanesi (or Albanian

                      Guild), some still in Venice, divided between the Correr

                      Museum and the Ca’ d’Oro, others in Bergamo and Milan.

1511-1520    A series of paintings with episodes from the life of St.

                      Stephen for the guild dedicated to that saint, the Scuola

                      di Santo Stefano (now divided between Milan, Paris,

                      Berlin and Stuttgart).

To see any or all of these, I suggest you visit a Hungarian website which is indispensable for any lover of painting: the Web Gallery of Art.

http://www.wga.hu/index1.html

Clicking on ARTISTS will take you to an alphabetical list, and when you find CARPACCIO you will be taken to

1. •The Stories from the Life of St Ursula (1490-96)
   

2. •Paintings until 1509
   

3. •Cycle in the San Giorgio degli Schiavoni (1502-07)
   

4. •Stories from the Life of St Stephen (1511-20)
   

5. •Paintings from 1510
   

The first of these will take you to the full St Ursula series; the third to San Giorgio deglie Schiavoni.   And if you like the look of them on your computer, imagine the joy of seeing them in reality.

(If you click on POSTCARD, incidentally, you will be able to choose any painting from their vast collection to send by email together with your own message, absolutely free.   And, to make things easier, they offer a whole series of themes to select from, including the following)

1. •Nativity (a selection)
   

2. •Adoration of the Shepherds (a selection)
   

3. •Adoration of the Magi (a selection)
   

4. •Winter landscapes (a selection)
   

(Click on one of these right now and you can save on Christmas cards and postage).