Shown from the hips up against a landscape, a woman with pale skin, wearing a burgundy-red dress with marigold-orange sleeves and a sheer veil, sits facing our left in profile as she reads a small book in this vertical painting. She has a straight nose and peach-colored lips. Her blond hair is covered by a bone-white headdress tied over her forehead. The veil drapes over the headdress, and her head is encircled with a faint gold ring, creating a halo. Her dress has full sleeves and is cinched into pleats at the high waist. The neckline is edged with a band of nickel gray decorated with a pattern of circles and leafy forms. The book has a red cover with a red ribbon, and she holds one index finger between the pages. A low chalk-white stone wall beyond the woman suggests she sits on a porch or balcony. A swath of powder-blue fabric drapes over the ledge on which she sits near one knee. To our left, a sliver of a shoulder, elbow, and toes of one foot suggest a person with pale skin draped in midnight blue, leaning back against a maroon-red pillow with tassels at the corners, in front of the woman and to our left. Behind that second person, in the landscape beyond the balcony, barren branches of a tree twist against the sky while a second tree, to our right, has a leafy, green canopy. A mustard-yellow meadow lined with bushes leads to the water’s edge, where ice-blue water leads back to rolling hills along the horizon. A few white buildings and a tower are clustered on the opposite shore. White and gray clouds float against the pale blue sky.

The Virgin Reading

Vittore Carpaccio

Shown from the hips up against a landscape, a woman with pale skin, wearing a burgundy-red dress with marigold-orange sleeves and a sheer veil, sits facing our left in profile as she reads a small book in this vertical painting. She has a straight nose and peach-colored lips. Her blond hair is covered by a bone-white headdress tied over her forehead. The veil drapes over the headdress, and her head is encircled with a faint gold ring, creating a halo. Her dress has full sleeves and is cinched into pleats at the high waist. The neckline is edged with a band of nickel gray decorated with a pattern of circles and leafy forms. The book has a red cover with a red ribbon, and she holds one index finger between the pages. A low chalk-white stone wall beyond the woman suggests she sits on a porch or balcony. A swath of powder-blue fabric drapes over the ledge on which she sits near one knee. To our left, a sliver of a shoulder, elbow, and toes of one foot suggest a person with pale skin draped in midnight blue, leaning back against a maroon-red pillow with tassels at the corners, in front of the woman and to our left. Behind that second person, in the landscape beyond the balcony, barren branches of a tree twist against the sky while a second tree, to our right, has a leafy, green canopy. A mustard-yellow meadow lined with bushes leads to the water’s edge, where ice-blue water leads back to rolling hills along the horizon. A few white buildings and a tower are clustered on the opposite shore. White and gray clouds float against the pale blue sky.

Colors in this work

Details
Artist
Vittore Carpaccio
Date
c. 1505
Medium
oil on panel transferred to canvas
Dimensions
overall: 78 × 51 cm (30 11/16 × 20 1/16 in.) framed: 119.7 × 86.36 × 16.51 cm (47 1/8 × 34 × 6 1/2 in.)
Department
CIS-R
Holding institution
National Gallery of Art
Palette

Select a color to find related artworks.

Image provider
national-gallery-of-art
License
CC0-1.0
Credit
Samuel H. Kress Collection

Art Genome Taxonomy

7 tags

Subject Matter

  • Deities and Holy Figures Both · 99%

    The title identifies the central figure as the Virgin, and the image visibly shows a faint circular halo around her head.

  • Landscapes and Waterscapes Both · 99%

    The catalog describes the figure against a landscape, while the image clearly shows trees, meadow, water, distant hills, buildings, and sky.

Styles and Movements

  • Renaissance Art Both · 97%

    The work is dated c. 1505 and its detailed devotional imagery, modeled figure, halo, landscape, and refined treatment of textiles are consistent with Renaissance art.

Visual Qualities

  • Highly Detailed Visual · 96%

    The painting has highly articulated details in the figure’s hair, veil, patterned neckline, book, garment folds, foliage, distant structures, and landscape.

Medium and Techniques

  • Oil Painting Metadata · 100%

    The museum record specifies an oil medium on a panel transferred to canvas.

  • Oil on Panel Metadata · 99%

    The cataloged medium is explicitly recorded as oil on panel transferred to canvas; the current visible support cannot be independently verified from the image.

Time Periods

  • 16th Century Art Metadata · 99%

    The museum dates the work to circa 1505, placing it in the sixteenth century.

Source & rights

Vittore Carpaccio. The Virgin Reading. Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington.

High-resolution sources

Catalog record ↗ Image source ↗ Image license ↗ Image-use terms ↗ Catalog metadata terms ↗

Related

Loading related artworks…