Vittore Carpaccio

Carpaccio studied under Gentile Bellini around 1460 or '65, absorbing influences from Antonello da Messina and Netherlandish painting that gave him a sharper command of perspective and bolder color than his mentor. He worked large: altarpieces for Venetian churches through the 1500s and 1510s, and sprawling narrative cycles like The Legend of Saint Ursula, begun in 1490. His Saint Augustine in His Study from 1502 shows the era's taste for exotic objects; his religious work carried the cross-cultural texture of the time. After 1510 commissions shifted to private patrons as tastes moved on - his fantasy-tinged, architecturally exact vision looked backward while Bellini and Giorgione pulled painting somewhere else. He died around 1525, his scholarship still thin compared to theirs.