The return of Carpaccio’s masterpiece has divided Italy and Slovenia.

On September 4, 2025, the 1518 work by Venetian Renaissance master Vittore Carpaccio, "Madonna and Child Enthroned with Six Saints," returned to the Slovenian city of Piran. The relocation of the altarpiece from Padua, where it had been housed for over 85 years, sparked violent protests from Italian politicians and reopened old historical wounds.

The return occurred just a few days before Italian President Sergio Mattarella’s official visit to Slovenia on September 10-11. Slovenian Culture Minister Asta Vrečko called the event the result of "years of effort" and promised that the painting would soon be exhibited "in its original setting."

The history of the creation of the altar image

Vittore Carpaccio was commissioned to create an altarpiece for the Church and Monastery of St. Francis of Assisi in Piran in 1518. This work belongs to the artist’s late period, when, working in Venice, where Titian’s rising talent dominated, he directed his activities primarily toward Istria and other peripheral centers of the Venetian possessions on the mainland.

The painting depicts the Virgin Mary and Child, seated on a throne in a monumental architectural loggia. Saints are arranged symmetrically around them: Francis of Assisi, patron of the church and the Franciscan order, Anthony of Padua, and Clare of Assisi, emphasizing Franciscan spirituality. Also present is Saint George in shining armor, chosen as the protector of Piran, reflecting the city’s long-standing devotion to this saint.

The composition is distinguished by the balance and order characteristic of Venetian altarpieces of the early 16th century. The details bear witness to Carpaccio’s exceptional attention to detail: the meticulously rendered steps leading to the throne, the classical vase adorned with a medallion of a Roman emperor, the richly embroidered cloak of Saint Ambrose, and the precisely designed armor of Saint George. A lyrical note is added by the angel tuning his lute.

Connection with the local community

The Franciscans had been present in Piran since the early 14th century and enjoyed strong support from the townspeople, who made generous donations. These donations made possible the creation of the altarpiece and accompanying stone elements, likely commissioned for the 200th anniversary of the monastery’s founding. Among the most notable benefactors was a barber named Master Yuri, who donated a whopping 121 ducats in 1502.

His extraordinary contribution likely explains why Saint George, his namesake, occupies such a prominent position in the painting. Carpaccio clearly had a special regard for Piran. The work was designed to seamlessly integrate with the church’s architecture and its spiritual function. The close connection between the composition, the city’s patron saint, and the architectural setting supports the assumption that Carpaccio personally visited Piran before beginning the work.

Military evacuation and storage in Padua

The painting was removed from Piran in 1940, when Istria was entirely within Italy, and transported for safekeeping during World War II. It was initially placed in storage at Villa Manin, a mansion approximately 20 kilometers southwest of Udine, Italy, which served as a repository for artworks from Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Istria.

After Italy’s capitulation in the fall of 1943, Villa Manin was no longer safe, and the art began to be returned to its owners. However, contact with the church and monastery in Piran was impossible, as the monks had been imprisoned by Nazi forces occupying Slovenian territory formerly under Italian rule.

On October 29, 1943, Carpaccio’s altarpiece was returned and most likely delivered directly to the Monastery of San Antonio in Padua. There, Catholic clergy took steps to preserve the work. Provincial Minister Andrea Eccher of Padua asked Manin to preserve Carpaccio’s "Madonna Enthroned with Child and Saints" in the Basilica of San Antonio in Padua.

The painting remained in the monastery’s storerooms, guarded but invisible to the public. In 1995, researchers collecting works for the new museum dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua, the Museo Antoniano, rediscovered the Venetian masterpiece. Following the discovery, Padua parish authorities contacted their Slovenian colleagues to return the work to its original location.

Restoration and temporary exhibition

Meanwhile, the altarpiece was restored and displayed at an exhibition dedicated to Carpaccio held at the Doge’s Palace in Venice. This further underscored the importance of this work for understanding the evolution of the Venetian master’s style. After years of international cooperation between the ministries of the Italian Province of St. Anthony of Padua, the monks of the Church of St. Francis in Piran, and the governments of Italy and Slovenia, the 16th-century masterpiece was finally returned to Piran.

Slovenian Ambassador Tomaž Kunstelj stated that "quiet diplomacy" was the key to the return of Carpaccio’s painting. He emphasized that this is the first of several dozen works of art removed for protection during World War II that are awaiting repatriation.

Political reaction in Italy

The painting’s handover was harshly criticized in Italy as a capitulation. Roberto Menia, a senator from Giorgi Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and a descendant of Istrian exiles, stated that the work "remains part of Italian heritage," emphasizing Carpaccio’s Venetian origins. Anna Maria Chisinte, a member of the European Parliament from the League party, expressed in a letter to Mattarella that the exiles had experienced "pain and a sense of loss."

Another member of parliament from the Brothers of Italy, Alessandro Urzi, called the broadcast "fundamentally flawed." Italian politicians insist the work remains part of their country’s cultural heritage.

Historical context of Istria

Piran is located in Istria, an Adriatic region historically under Italian control but now divided between Slovenia, Croatia, and Italy. The Istrian peninsula was incorporated into the Roman Empire in 178 and 177 BC. Over the centuries, the territory passed under the control of various powers, including the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Venetian Republic, and the Austrian Empire.

After World War I, the city, along with Trieste and all of Istria, was ceded to Italy. The situation changed during World War II. With the defeat of the Axis powers and the rise of Tito’s regime, Piran was transferred to the Free Territory of Trieste, Zone B, under Yugoslav administration.

The city was annexed by Yugoslavia in 1954 in accordance with the London Memorandum, signed jointly with Italy. The annexation to Yugoslavia was finally ratified by the Treaty of Osimo in 1975, with the municipality becoming part of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. Since 1991, Piran has been part of independent Slovenia.

Istrian-Dalmatian Exodus

This question evokes painful historical memories. Approximately 350,000 Italians left Istria and Dalmatia after World War II due to threats and repression in Tito’s Yugoslavia. The Istrian-Dalmatian exodus was the postwar exodus and departure of local ethnic Italians, as well as ethnic Slovenes and Croats, from Yugoslavia.

Economic instability, ethnic hatred, and the international political context that ultimately led to the Iron Curtain led up to 350,000 people, mostly Italians, to leave Istria, Dalmatia, and the northern Julian Carniola. The exodus occurred between 1943 and 1960, with major movements in 1943, 1945, 1947, and 1954.

The city of Pula experienced a mass exodus of its Italian population. Between December 1946 and September 1947, Pula was almost deserted. Its residents left everything to become Italian citizens. Of the 32,000 people, 28,000 left. A significant portion of Piran’s population chose to emigrate to Italy or abroad during the final stage of the Istrian-Dalmatian exodus rather than remain in socialist Yugoslavia.

In a 1991 interview with the Italian magazine Panorama, prominent Yugoslav political dissident Milovan Djilas claimed he was sent to Istria with Edvard Kardelj in 1946 to organize anti-Italian propaganda. He stated that it was "necessary to apply all kinds of pressure to convince the Italians to leave" since they constituted the majority in urban areas.

The fate of the Franciscan monastery in Piran

The Franciscans began construction of the current Church of St. Francis in 1301 and completed it in 1318. Piran Monastery was the only one in Istria that continued to function even after the formal annexation of the former Venetian Istria by the Kingdom of Italy in May 1806, when a series of decrees abolished the Minorite monasteries in Milje, Koper, Poreč, Vodnjan, and Pula.

The Piran monastery received many monks and much of the movable heritage from the abolished Istrian monasteries, especially from Koper. In Piran, the Minorites continued to fulfill their mission until the monastery’s nationalization in 1954, when the premises were converted into a nursing home. In 1992, an application for denationalization of the monastery complex was submitted; the process took eight years. From 1954 to 1990, it was nationalized, and with the denationalization, it was returned to the Church in 1996.

Vittore Carpaccio and his place in Renaissance art

Vittore Carpaccio, sometimes also called Vittorio, was born in Venice around 1460–1465 and died in Koper in 1526. He was one of the greatest Venetian painters of the Renaissance. Carpaccio was an Italian painter of the Venetian school who studied under Gentile Bellini.

His work was heavily influenced by the style of the early Italian Renaissance artist Antonello da Messina, as well as early Netherlandish art. Although he was often compared to his mentor Gentile Bellini, his mastery of Vittore Carpaccio’s perspective, precise attention to architectural detail, themes of death, and use of bold colors distinguished him from other Italian Renaissance artists.

Carpaccio’s works ranged from individual canvases to altarpieces and large painting cycles. Several altarpieces, including "Saint Thomas Aquinas Enthroned" (1507), "The Presentation of Christ in the Temple" (1510), and "The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand" (1515), were commissioned by churches in Venice, while works after 1510 were primarily commissioned by individual patrons in Venice.

Carpaccio was particularly attached to his city, Venice, and became famous for his large canvases, large-scale works on canvas that replaced frescoes in the city on the lagoon for preservation reasons. They often depicted sacred stories, especially saints. Thanks to his canvases, he is also considered one of the best witnesses to the appearance of 15th-century Venice.

Around 1490, he began painting a cycle of scenes from the legend of Saint Ursula for the Scuola di Santa Orsola, now housed in the Galleries of the Accademia in Venice. In these works, he emerged as a mature artist of originality, displaying a gift for organization, narrative mastery, and a mastery of light.

By 1510, Carpaccio’s style was perceived by his contemporaries as overly conservative, showing virtually no influence from the humanist trends that transformed Italian Renaissance painting during his lifetime. He was renowned for his penchant for meticulously devoting himself to the smallest details of composition. His fortunes fluctuated between minor successes and major commissions, leading to a gradual decline and decline in the quality of his paintings due to his insistence that he did not want to adapt to new trends, but rather remained consistent in his painting methods.

Installing a painting in a church

The painting will be placed in the Church of St. Francis in Piran on December 27, 2025, following the completion of restoration work on the church’s main altar. Janez Šaber, the guardian of the Monastery of St. Francis, called the painting’s return after 85 years a sign of good cooperation.

In 1787, the work was moved from the main altar to the side nave, where it was placed in a new altar niche. Now the painting will return to its original setting, where it was conceived as an integral part of the architectural and spiritual space.

The significance of the work in art history

The altarpiece "Madonna and Child with Saints Ambrose, Peter, Francis, Anthony, Clara, George, and Two Angel-Musicians" belongs to the final phase of Vittore Carpaccio’s work. Intended for the altar in the Franciscan church in Piran (most likely the main altar), the work depicts the Madonna and Child surrounded by Saints Ambrose, Peter, Francis, Anthony, Clara, George, and two angel-musicians.

In the background is a landscape that accurately conveys the appearance of Piran in the 16th century. While moving within a compositional framework still linked to the 15th-century tradition, Carpaccio manages to transcend its boundaries through a meticulously studied graphic structure, strict perspective balances, highly developed color fields, and exquisite descriptive details.

There are several notable iconographic elements: the realistic view of the Piran landscape; the figure of Saint George, the city’s patron saint; the inclusion of Saints Francis and Anthony, whose faces are rendered as true portraits; and the presence, rare in the Veneto region, of Saint Ambrose, possibly linked to the religious movements and heterodox currents that animated Istria at the time.

Prospects for further repatriations

The return of Carpaccio’s painting coincided with Italian President Sergio Mattarella’s visit to Slovenia on September 10-11, further underscoring the spirit of cooperation between the governments and religious institutions of the two countries. The Slovenian ambassador emphasized that this is the first of several dozen works of art removed for protection during World War II that are awaiting repatriation.

In January 2019, a qualified technical team removed Vittore Carpaccio’s painting "The Enthroned Virgin and Child with Six Saints" from the wall. This was the beginning of a process that ultimately led to the work’s return to Slovenia.

The issue of returning works of art from Istria remains a sensitive one. In 2002, when Vittorio Sgarbi, Undersecretary of Cultural Heritage, recovered dozens of paintings from oblivion in the basement of the Palazzo Venezia, particularly portraits created between the 15th and 18th centuries by Venetian artists including Paolo Veneziano, Alvise Vivarini, Alessandro Algardi, Giambattista Tiepolo, and Vittore and Benedetto Carpaccio, he ordered their restoration and exhibition in Trieste. Slovenia demanded their return.

Reaction of the cultural community

The return of the altarpiece was a significant event for the cultural heritage of both countries. The work is more than just a painting. It is a carefully considered spatial intervention, combining theological symbolism and local identity.

Istrian artistic heritage is closely linked to the Venetian tradition, but has its own unique characteristics. The presence of Saint Ambrose in altarpieces, rare in the Veneto region, is possibly linked to the religious movements and heterodox currents that animated Istria in the early 16th century.

The composition is marked by the balance and order characteristic of Venetian altarpieces of the early 16th century. The details bear witness to Carpaccio’s exceptional attention to detail: the meticulously rendered steps leading to the throne, the classical all’antica vase adorned with a medallion of a Roman emperor, the richly embroidered cloak of Saint Ambrose, and the precisely designed armor of Saint George.

Preserving cultural heritage during wartime

The evacuation of art from Istria during World War II is an important example of efforts to preserve cultural heritage during conflict. As early as 1934, a highly classified circular from the Ministry of National Education revealed that Italy was preparing for war.

Fausto Franco, the leader of the "Monument Men" who saved the artistic heritage when the Germans took over Adriatische Künstenland in 1943, continued the work of protecting it. When the Germans arrived, they returned some works to their owners, moved others to San Daniele, Cividale, and other places in Friuli, and resisted the Nazis with the help of bureaucracy.

Villa Manin found a new purpose between 1940 and 1943 during World War II: its isolated location and large rooms prompted the Directorate to select it as a temporary storage location for works of art from Friuli and Istria. The villa was later occupied by German troops.

The current state of the monument

The Franciscan Church and Monastery of St. Francis in Piran constitutes an important architectural complex. The Church of St. Catherine of Siena was already built in 1301 when construction began on the nearby monastery church of St. Francis of Assisi.

Monastery historians have written that Giuseppe Tartini received his first musical education at the monastery, where his parents rented a room after 1700. On the 300th anniversary of Giuseppe Tartini’s birth, drawings of old tombstones were found in the monastery archives, including one belonging to the Tartini family.

The monastery’s atrium has been the venue for musical evenings in Piran for decades. Leading to the cloister is a semi-arched portal, adorned with richly carved columns, supporting an architrave with an inscription and coats of arms.

Final preparations for installation

The Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Slovenia carried out the necessary preparations for the return of the altarpiece. A qualified technical team worked on the conservation and restoration of the work.

The painting will be installed in the Church of St. Francis in Piran on December 27, 2025, following the completion of restoration work on the church’s main altar. This will allow the work to return to its original architectural setting, where it will be integrated with the church’s spiritual function.

The return of Vittore Carpaccio’s "Madonna and Child Enthroned with Six Saints" to Piran ends more than 85 years of the work’s absence from its original context. This event demonstrates the possibility of cultural cooperation between countries, even in the face of complex historical relations. However, the political reaction in Italy demonstrates that issues surrounding Istria’s cultural heritage continue to stir deep emotional and historical wounds.