Christus zwischen vier Engeln

Carpaccio signed and dated this in 1496, the same years he was at work on his famous cycle of Saint Ursula back in Venice. He made it for a church in Udine, and it shows Christ standing on a stone base, holding the cross, with four angels around him carrying the instruments of his suffering. Look past the figures and the setting is local, gentle Venetian hills, and the castle on the right resembles the one that still stands above Udine. After Napoleon's wars the Austrians carried the picture off toward Vienna. It came back to Italy only in 1919, at the end of the First World War, and returned to Udine.