The Departure of Ceyx

Carpaccio's Departure of Ceyx from around 1504 depicts a scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses—the farewell of the Thessalian king Ceyx to his wife Alcyone before his fatal sea voyage—demonstrating his engagement with classical mythology alongside his more celebrated biblical and hagiographic subjects. The maritime setting was ideally suited to a Venetian painter whose entire visual world was organized around the sea, and Carpaccio's departure scene combines the drama of leave-taking with an extraordinary documentation of fifteenth-century Venetian harbor life—ships, rigging, wharves, and the human activity of maritime commerce. His mythological works demonstrate the breadth of his sources while revealing how consistently he translated all subject matter into the visual vocabulary of contemporary Venice, making ancient mythology simultaneous with the living city he documented throughout his career.

The departure scene is rendered with Carpaccio's characteristic precision in depicting ships, harbor architecture, and the emotional drama of farewell.