Carpatcher or Carpaccio? Carpaccio and 19th century anglo-american writers in Venice

The re-discovery of Vittore Carpaccio in the 19th century has been generally attributed to John Ruskin. Is this true? No doubt this is so in the Anglo-Saxon world, as shown by a 1924 story by American writer Edith Wharton, where John Ruskin becomes a fictional character causing the protagonist to change his tastes in favor of the “primitives” and Carpaccio. The focus is then on Ruskin and Henry James, admirers of Carpaccio, and on other great American writers of the 19th century who ignored the painter. An English woman critic, very popular in the 1850s, Anna Jameson, wrote at length on him. By the end of the 19th century seeing Carpaccio was a “must” for visitors going to Venice. The popularity of Carpaccio is reconstructed on the basis of two diaries, Lady Layard’s and Zina Hulton’s: not only had D’Annunzio a bed like St. Ursula’s made for him, but a French lawyer had a whole room like St. Ursula’s, in "The Dream of St. Ursula", built for him in his Venetian Palazzo.