The Disputation of Saint Stephen

The wool workers of Venice had their own confraternity at the church of Santo Stefano, and between 1511 and 1520 they paid Carpaccio for five large canvases on the life of their patron saint, to hang in the rooms where they met. This is Stephen arguing his case before the elders of the Sanhedrin. Carpaccio signed and dated it inside the picture, VICTOR CARPATHIUS PINXIT M D X I I I I, which fixes it to 1514. The city behind the figures is invented, an eastern capital assembled from prints and from Venice itself. The heads in the front row are men of the confraternity, painted from life beside three doctors in turbans. In 1806, when the French suppressed the religious houses of Venice, the cycle was taken out of the building and dispersed. The other surviving canvases are now in Berlin, in Paris and in Stuttgart.