Fishing with cormorants: a note on Vittore Carpaccio's Hunting on the lagoon

Apollo, Sept, 2003 by Elfriede R. Knauer

Ever since Carpaccio's charming panel of Hunting on the lagoon (Figs. 1 and 3), which has been convincingly dated to the early 1490s, resurfaced in Italy in 1944, it has been assumed that the painting showed the Venetian lagoon with birds being hunted by archers standing at the prows of their boats. (1) This assessment did not change after the discovery in 1963 that the painting was part of a more extensive composition. The somewhat incongruous cluster of large white lilies delineated against the greenish water of the lagoon at the lower left of the panel led to the connection with Carpaccio's famous Two Venetian ladies on a balcony in the Museo Correr in Venice. (2) There, the stem of the lilies rises from the majolica vase on the parapet of the rooftop terrace where two ladies, perhaps mother and daughter, seem to await word about the return of the hunters in a mood of definite but acquiescent boredom. (3) The fit is perfect, as was demonstrated by the temporary reunification of the two paintings at Palazzo Grassi in Venice a few years ago (Fig. 2). One cannot but admire the daring juxtaposition of an intimate close-up scene in the foreground with the distant view of boats on the shallow waters of the lagoon.

[FIGURES 1-2 OMITTED]

The purpose of this note is to clarify the activity depicted in the Getty painting. Even the latest exhaustive investigation of both panels did not question the presumed hunting practice represented there. (4) However, it did rightly point out that the archers use terracotta halls instead of arrows to hit the birds. Containers for the halls are visible on cloth-covered boards at the prows of the boats, and one of these is shown in mid air, released from the bow of the hunter in the barge at the lower right of the painting. Understandably, the J. Paul Getty Museum Handbook of the Collections of 2001, still describes the subject of the painting as a bird hunt. (5)

Assuming that the birds are the intended prey of the bunt, why are they not depicted as quarry? Casting an innocent eye on the visual evidence will clear up a number of misconceptions. The first striking tact is the presence of a single bird--in each case unquestionably a cormorant--perched on the edge of the rear part of at least five of the seven boats visible. Others sit quietly on stakes supporting the reed fences put up as fish corrals in the shallow waters, (6) or on poles rammed into the mud--probably for farming mussels. Here, one of the birds spreads its wings to let its plumage dry in the sun, an attitude which is highly characteristic of cormorants and their relatives. (7) The birds do hot seem in the least alarmed by the presence of the archers. Each of the flat-bottomed boats in the foreground is propelled in leisurely fashion by two standing oarsmen, (8) gondola-style on the left, and by a third standing art and on the right. Two of the latter are tall young moors. (9) Only the slightest ripples or eddies are visible around the prows and sterns of the barges.

The setting of all this activity is meticulously depicted. It is the reed-studded mud flats of the lagoons of the northern Adriatic that are ideally suited to coastal fishery and bird hunting. (10) A group of rush cabins nestle among canals that drain the reedy marshes into the open water. A gap in the fences that allows boats to pass through is marked by a sign on a pole for orientation from a distance or in bad visibility. The rich aquatic flora provides sustenance for water birds: a v-shaped wedge of swans followed by a straggler stands out against a limpid sky above the grey-blue silhouette of the Colli Euganei. (11) Vaporous clouds gather in the centre of the sky. A large solitary crane takes off to the left, subtly guiding the eye towards the missing leaf of the double door or shutter where the seascape doubtless continued. One wonders whether it was compositionally as self-contained as the Getty panel is.

Turning back to the hunt, it has gone largely unnoticed that two sizeable silvery--white fish--apparently a already gutted--are draped over the edge of the prow or the boat to left of the lilies. A dozen are visible on the barge speeding homeward behind the fish fence in the left background. Since the even more distant boat heading for the mouth of a canal is seen from the left, its catch--presumably aligned on the right side--is hot shown. The labours of these crews are over, while those of the five vessels in the foreground have just begun. In any event, the work is clearly done for the hunters by the birds. But how does it all function, and what are we witnessing? Cormorant fishing is known to have been practised as a sport in Holland, England and France in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and it has generally been assumed that it was introduced by well-travelled Dutchmen who might have encountered it in the Far East. (12) Carpaccio's painting is a unique visual testimony to the sport's popularity in renaissance Venice, where--as we shall see--it was very probably already current by the fourteenth century. However, to comprehend the mechanics of the game, we will have to look at regions where the expertise and know-how are still alive.