Strage degli Innocenti

Giovanni Francesco Caroto's Massacre of the Innocents (Strage degli Innocenti) presents Herod's order to kill all male infants in Bethlehem, one of the most emotionally extreme subjects in Christian art. The Massacre was a topic that allowed painters to explore the extremes of parental grief and military brutality, the dead and dying infants and the screaming mothers creating scenes of extraordinary pathos. Caroto's Veronese interpretation, influenced by Mantegna's severe precision and the warmer Venetian tradition he also absorbed, creates a composition that confronts the horror directly while maintaining the formal dignity expected of a serious religious commission.

Caroto's treatment shows the influence of both Mantegna's archaeological precision and the more dynamic compositional energy entering Veronese painting from central Italian Mannerism in the 1520s.