Apparition of the Crucified of Mount Ararat

Around 1511 Venice was living through an outbreak of plague, and the prior of the monastery of Sant'Antonio di Castello, Francesco Ottobon, prayed for his community to be spared. Carpaccio's picture shows what the prior said happened next: a procession of the crucified martyrs of Mount Ararat appeared to him inside his own church. The remarkable thing is what that setting gives us now. To stage the vision the painter recorded the interior of Sant'Antonio di Castello in detail, its altars, its hanging lamps, its wooden choir, and that church was pulled down long ago. So the painting doubles as a portrait of a Venetian building no one can visit anymore. A friar walks the near aisle, half turned, as if he has just noticed the visitors filling the nave.