This study aims to make known the unpublished Blessing Christ by Carpaccio, traced in the Photo Libraries of Roberto Longhi and Carlo Volpe.
In 1966 the painting was owned by the Bolognese antiquarian Giorgio Balboni and was previously in the Stora Art Galleries in New York, as is clear from the photograph in the Photo Library Collection of the National Gallery of Washington. The latter shows the painting in a slightly different state of conservation, making its quality even more apparent, although it is analogous to the already known Christ the Saviour of the New Orleans Museum of Art (ca. 1510). The present study also discusses the dating to be assigned to the work, taking as a starting point the valuable information provided in the handwritten notes of Longhi and Volpe. The date proposed is in the early 1490s, coinciding with the first canvases of the St. Ursula cycle, many years separating it from the Blessing Christ by Antonello da Messina (London, National Gallery), a painting, however, which seems to have been a distant prototype for Carpaccio.