Two Venetian Ladies
Vittore Carpaccio, 1490
Two Venetian Ladies is an oil on panel by Vittore Carpaccio, usually dated to around 1490-1495, and it is kept in the Museo Correr in Venice. For a long time it was given a later date, and in the nineteenth century John Ruskin gave it the catchy title The Two Courtesans, based on the idle poses of the figures and their low necklines. Modern scholars tend to see two women of high birth, probably from the Torella patrician family, as the coat of arms on the vase suggests. The panel is thought to be the lower part of a diptych whose other half is the Getty's Hunting in the Lagoon, separated long ago; the matching grain of the wood supported this link. It may have served as a decorative shutter or a folding cabinet door. The women sit on a marble terrace with a geometric floor, playing with two dogs and watching birds: a lapwing, two turtledoves and a parrot. Details such as the red chopines and the high-waisted dresses with detachable sleeves document Venetian fashion. The objects seem to carry a moral message: the myrtle and the doves point to marriage, the lapwing to fertility and the parrot to the Annunciation, while the handkerchief and the lily stress female virtue.
- Painter
- Vittore Carpaccio
- Date
- 1490
- Medium
- oil paint, panel
- Dimensions
- 94 × 64 cm
- Museum
- Museo Correr, Venice
- Movement
- High Renaissance, Venetian school
- Genre
- portrait, allegory
- Depicts
- chopine, dog, necklace, vase, handkerchief, peafowl, pigeon, woman
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