The story
Vittore Carpaccio, the Venetian painter, signed and dated a canvas in 1496 for the church of San Pietro Martire in Udine. It shows Christ standing among four angels who hold the instruments of the Passion, and few pictures have travelled so far from home and come back. After the Napoleonic wars it passed to Austria, and from 1838 it belonged to the imperial collections in Vienna. It returned to Italy in 1919, but to the Accademia galleries in Venice, and only after a long dispute between the two cities did it come back to Udine, in 2007.
It hangs today in Udine Castle, on the hill above the old town, rebuilt after an earthquake in 1511 and now home to the civic museums. The Galleria d'Arte Antica runs through 13 rooms on the first floor, with paintings from the 1400s to the 1800s that came from churches, houses and palaces around Friuli. Several canvases by Giambattista Tiepolo, who first came to Udine from Venice around the age of 30, hang together, among them the Consilium in Arena.
Next to the gallery is the Parliament Hall, where the assembly of Friuli met every year, its walls frescoed in the late 16th century by Pomponio Amalteo and Giovanni Battista Grassi.
