잉글랜드 사절의 도착

Carpaccio painted this in the 1490s as one of nine large canvases telling the legend of Saint Ursula, made for the confraternity that honoured her in Venice. The scene is set in Brittany. English ambassadors have come to ask the local king for his daughter's hand for their prince, and the story will end badly, with Ursula's martyrdom far from home. But look at the city Carpaccio built around them. It is Venice. The funnel-shaped chimneys, the open roof terraces, the canal-side steps, the faces in the crowd, all of it belongs to the Venice just outside the meeting-house door. He dressed a distant Breton legend in the everyday fabric of his own city at the height of its wealth. On the left a scribe records the talks, a small seated figure often read as the painter watching his own scene.