A wistful pilgrim sits on a marble step in the right foreground of Vittore Carpaccio’s Ordination of St. Stephen (around 1511). Turning to gaze at the picture’s protagonist, he is below the consecrating hand of St. Peter himself. Stephen heads a ritual formation of youthful aspirants to the office of deacon, all of them wearing sumptuous dalmatics of luminous embroidered silk, or red velvet in the case of the proto-deacon and proto-martyr.

There is so much for the eye to linger on here that it soon occurs to you the pilgrim must embody a vector function: the diagonal of his tilted pose focuses your gaze on the ritual action, and yet inevitably draws you to look beyond into the pale, stony world of the ancient city to the right (Jerusalem, but architecturally reminiscent of Venice and Rome) and the decaying pagan shrines below giant hills to the left.