Arrival of the Pilgrims in Cologne

By 1490, when Carpaccio signed and dated this canvas, Venice had spent a generation watching the Ottoman advance. Constantinople had fallen in 1453, the island of Negroponte in 1470, and the Turkish fleet was a standing fear along the trade routes the city lived by. That anxiety seems to have crept into an old Christian legend. The scene shows Ursula and her fellow pilgrims sailing up the Rhine to Cologne, only to find the city held by a besieging army. Over the enemy camp Carpaccio painted banners bearing three crowns on red, which scholars read as a sign of Sultan Mehmed II and the Turkish threat pressing on Venice itself. In the foreground the Hun leader is being told of the ship's arrival, moments before the massacre the pilgrims are sailing toward. This was the first of the nine canvases he finished for the cycle.