Artibus et Historiae no. 21 (XI)

1990, ISSN 0391-9064

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LUBOMÍR KONEČNÝ - Vittore Carpaccio's Young Knight Reconsidered

Carpaccio's Young Knight in the Collection of Baron Thyssen-Bonemisza in Lugano is usually considered the first known independent full-length portrait in Italian painting, its model being variously identified and the painting dated from 1495 to about 1520. Since the mere physical evidence which the work offers appears ambigous, this study tries to unravel its mystery by focusing on one of its major symbolic motifs - the combat between the f alcon and the heron waged high above the young hero. The motif figures in two late-sixteenth-century Nuremberg emblem-books, where it seems to have originated in the work of Albrecht Dürer. Particularly the recto of fol. 12 of the so-called Prayer-book of Emperor Maximilian I (1515) shows a drawing which bears an amazing similarity, in both its overall conception and several conspicuous details, to the Lugano painting. This can be explained as follows: Dürer's drawing represents a recollection of the painting by Carpaccio which the German master saw on his second sojourn in Venice (1505-1507), and which consequently must have already been, if not completed, then in an advanced state. For reasons unknown, the painting remained unfinished or unsigned until 1510 (or even later). For that matter, the period of 1505-1507 provides terminus ante quem for the decisive stage in the gestation of Carpaccio's Young Knight in Lugano. Of necessity related to this is the need to revise its status of a straightforward portrait painting.