We have now to trace the old narrative style to its climax and end in Vittore Carpaccio.[76] He inherited all the panoramic and luministic accomplishments of Gentile Bellini, but applied them with far greater imagination. He deals with legend, giving it contemporary color, and in his sensitive hands it becomes the most veridical and charming of fairy lands. Carpaccio’s training is obscure to us. It may be that the very mediocre narrative painter, Lazzaro Bastiani, first taught him. In any case he drew more from Gentile Bellini’s resolute handling of light, textures and costume. We first meet Carpaccio as an artist in the decoration of the Great School of St. Ursula from 1492 to 1495. He was probably all of fifty years old. The childlike legend, with its numerous embassies, meetings and partings, settings out and arrivings, gave him spectacular opportunities of which he made the most winning use. In the nine canvases now in the Academy we find an epitome of the courtesy, circumstance and adventure that accompanied travel in those days, and the mere spectacle is underlaid with a pensive ideality; for these are no ordinary journeys, but the quest of martyrdom by a princely youth and maiden. Nothing is insisted on, however, but the gayety of the events, and the picturesqueness of their settings. As in all good story-telling, the persuasiveness depends on veracious minor episodes. There are the most attentive scribes and secretaries, as if to carry off the unlikely matter they are inditing. The heavy ease of men-at-arms and self-conscious elegance of young Venetian fops make them credible witnesses to else incredible legend. To adorn his tales Carpaccio borrowed from the woodcut illustrations to Breydenbach’s “Itinerary to Jerusalem.” It is remarkable how he invests these mere skeletons of cities with color, sunlight, the glamour of the orient. About all he draws a veil of air saturated with sunlight, concentrated into rising clouds whose shadows darken the lustrous blue of the tranquil lagoon. There never was a more ravishing raconteur in the art of making incidentals count for essentials. Such a picture as Prince Hero taking leave of his father and greeting St. Ursula, Figure 244, is the fulfilment of all that old Jacopo Bellini and his Veronese precursors had dreamed of. It is typical of a series which has its more intimate phases only by way of exception. The virginal beauty of the legend gets a real expression only in the Vision of St. Ursula. Figure 245. The character of the earnest, slumbering face and the sweet slight body carries through the exquisitely indicated space, and we hardly need to be told that the wistful boyish angel is offering a martyr’s palm. Possibly it takes a mundane person like Carpaccio to realize the beauty of the more fantastic religious ardors. A completely devout person takes them as in the day’s work. [Illustration: FIG. 245. Carpaccio. Dream of St. Ursula.—_Venice_. ]