On Tuesday, we drove down to see the Carpaccio exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. It seems to me that we had previously seen one of the paintings, "The Lion of St. Mark" at the Doge's Palace; but that was more than twenty years ago. The rest of the paintings and drawings were all new to me. The exhibition was worth the trip.
The most spectacular painting was probably of a martyrdom of ten thousand at Mt. Ararat. It recalled Goethe's strictures on paintings with martyrdoms in The Flight to Italy. Yet here it was not that the tortures were gruesome, it was that they were extravagant. Ten men crucified makes for an appalling picture; dozens crucified is just odd. And none of the martyrs seemed much troubled by his condition. I say "his" condition, for my wife remarked that there were no women in the picture. According to information on-line, the martyrs are all said to have been legionaries, which would explain this.
The most interesting painting to my eye was "St. Augustine in His Study." You can see a images of a selection from the exhibition at the National Gallery's website.
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