This vivid 15th-century painting presents a fascinating mixture of religious and worldly subjects. It combines The Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross with a bustling scene at the Venetian Rialto – the international marketplace at the financial heart of the medieval city.
Carpaccios’s lively narrative scene depicts the miracle of a possessed man being healed with a fragment of wood from Christ’s Holy Cross. Yet this miraculous event is confined to the left-hand side of the painting. The rest of the canvas is crowded with the commercial life around the Rialto Bridge. There is a busy multicultural mix of Venetians in red and black togas, Armenians or Turks in tall-brimmed black hats, and turbaned Turkish or Arabic traders. White-robed members of the Scuola (a fraternity in Venice) process across the bridge, while below it gondoliers carry their passengers on the Grand Canal, and on a high ledge above, a woman beats her carpet.
It has often been noted that two of the 14 smartly-dressed gondoliers are black men; probably slaves, domestic servants or freed slaves originally from sub-Saharan Africa. One is clearly visible in the foreground, with his feathered red cap, red jerkin and flamboyantly patterned hose, while the other is less prominent on the right-hand side. Black gondoliers appear again in Carpaccio’s Hunting on the Lagoon (c. 1490–95). They provide an interesting context for Shakespeare’s later depiction of Othello in Venice.
In Shakespeare’s other Venetian play, The Merchant of Venice, the Jewish moneylender Shylock asks the Christian merchant Antonio, ‘What news on the Rialto?’ (1.3.38). He tells how the place is buzzing with news of Antonio’s international ventures to Tripoli and the Indies, Mexico and England (1.3.19–20).
Later Shylock’s question is echoed precisely by Antonio’s friend Solanio (3.1.1) suggesting that, in the Rialto, differences are put aside in the name of shared trading interests. As in Carpaccio’s painting, it is a locus for the exchange of news, exotic goods and encounters between people of different ethnicities, languages and religions. Yet Shylock also reveals that these multicultural interactions can be deeply problematic. ‘In the Rialto’ Christians abused him, calling him ‘cut-throat dog’ for lending money at interest (1.3.106–113).
The painting by Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1465–1525/6) was part of a cycle of nine large works by prominent Venetian artists on the Legend of the True Cross. They were commissioned by one of the five fraternities of Venice, the Scuola di San Giovanni, to hang in their headquarters.
© The Miracle of the Relic of the True Cross on the Rialto Bridge, 1494 (oil on canvas) (see also 119437), Carpaccio, Vittore (c.1460/5-1523/6) / Galleria dell' Accademia, Venice, Italy / Bridgeman Images
Shakespeare set many of his plays in Italy, though he almost certainly never went there. Andrew Dickson assesses how much Shakespeare knew about the country and its people, and describes how the playwright drew from myth and reality to create a rich imaginative space.
The valuation of property and people – particularly women – in Shakespeare’s Venice reflects contemporary anxieties nearer home, suggests Farah Karim-Cooper.
Othello is a tragedy that proceeds from misunderstandings and miscommunication. Many of these errors are bound up with Iago's deception, but Michael Donkor looks at other, additional causes in the play.
The title page of the first quarto printing of The Merchant of Venice (1600) gives a succinct summary of the plot: ...
The plot of Othello revolves around a Moorish general who has achieved great military feats on behalf of the state ...
Share this page
Please consider the environment before printing