''Two Venetian Ladies'' is an oil on panel painting by the Italian Renaissance artist

Vittore Carpaccio Vittore Carpaccio ( , , ; – ) was an Italian painter of the Venetian School (art), Venetian school who studied under Gentile Bellini. Carpaccio was largely influenced by the style of the early Italian Renaissance painter Antonello da Messina ...

. The painting, believed to be a quarter of the original work, was executed around 1490 and shows two unknown Venetian ladies. The top portion of the panel, called ''Hunting on the Lagoon'' is in the

Getty Museum The J. Paul Getty Museum, commonly referred to as the Getty, is an art museum in Los Angeles, California, United States, housed on two campuses: the Getty Center and Getty Villa. It is operated by the J. Paul Getty Trust, the world's wealthies ...

, and another matching panel is missing. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the painting began to be interpreted as depicting two

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s, some commentators pointing to the red

chopine A chopine is a type of women's platform shoe that was popular in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. Chopines were originally used as a patten, clog, or overshoe to protect shoes and dresses from mud and street soil. In Venice both courtes ...

s, or platform clogs, on the left, as supposed markers of such women, while their apparent idleness, or their low décolletage, led others to that conclusion. Modern art historians think them more likely to be members of the patrician Torella family: the Torella crest appears on the vase shown on the parapet, and their fine clothes and pearl necklaces, suggest high status. The style of their gowns and personal presentation conforms to that of high-born Venetian women of the time. Several objectsthe white

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, the

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s and the animals (the

dove Columbidae is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with small heads, relatively short necks and slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. ...

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is often called Earth's "twin" or "sister" planet for having almost the same size and mass, and the closest orbit to Earth's. While both are rocky planets, Venus has an atmosphere much thicker ...

's bird)are symbols of

chastity Chastity, also known as purity, is a virtue related to temperance. Someone who is ''chaste'' refrains from sexual activity that is considered immoral or from any sexual activity, according to their state of life. In some contexts, for exampl ...

. Academic debate continues, as with other similar Venetian paintings of the period. Another painted panel, now in the

, was published in 1944, and it was later realized that this is part of the same work, fitting above this part: it portrays several boats in a lagoon, and would explain the meaning of the scene, as two women awaiting their husbands' return after an expedition hunting, or fishing with

cormorant Phalacrocoracidae is a family of approximately 40 species of aquatic birds commonly known as cormorants and shags. Several different classifications of the family have been proposed, but in 2021 the International Ornithologists' Union (IOU) ado ...

s, in the Venetian lagoon. Another panel the same size as these two combined would have been on the left; probably the two were hinged together to make a

diptych A diptych (, ) is any object with two flat plates which form a pair, often attached by a hinge. For example, the standard notebook and school exercise book of the ancient world was a diptych consisting of a pair of such plates that contained a ...

, or a folding door or shutter. The Getty panel has an illusionistic letter rack painted on the back of the panel, which was presumably matched on this panel. This appears to be the earliest small-scale

trompe-l'œil ; ; ) is an artistic term for the highly realistic optical illusion of three-dimensional space and objects on a Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional surface. , which is most often associated with painting, tricks the viewer into perceiving p ...

painting since antiquity. This discovery was verified by an in-depth technical analysis, comparing the two fragmentary panels. ]

References

Further reading