Research Catalog

Title

Tiepolo pink / Roberto Calasso ; translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen.

Author

Calasso, Roberto

Publication

New York : Alfred A. Knopf, c2009.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Description

288 p. : ill. (chiefly col.); 22 cm.

Summary

"The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces, and villas, often covering vast ceilings like those at the Würzburg Residenz in Germany and the Royal Palace in Madrid with frescoes that are among the glories of Western art. The life of an epoch swirled around him--but though his contemporaries appreciated and admired him, they failed to understand him. Few have even attempted to tackle Tiepolo's series of thirty-three bizarre and haunting etchings, the Capricci and the Scherzi, but Roberto Calasso rises to the challenge, interpreting them as chapters in a dark narrative that contains the secret of Tiepolo's art. Blooming ephebes, female Satyrs, Oriental sages, owls, snakes: we will find them all, as well as Punchinello and Death, within the pages of this book, along with Venus, Time, Moses, numerous angels, Cleopatra, and Beatrice of Burgundy--a motley company always on the go. Calasso makes clear that Tiepolo was more than a dazzling intermezzo in the history of painting. Rather, he represented a particular way of meeting the challenge of form: endowed with a fluid, seemingly effortless style, Tiepolo was the last incarnation of that peculiar Italian virtue sprezzatura, the art of not seeming artful."--From publisher description.

Uniform Title

Rosa Tiepolo. English

Alternative Title

Rosa Tiepolo.

Subject

• Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 1696-1770 > Criticism and interpretation
• Tiepolo, Giovanni Battista, 1696-1770

Note

• "Originally published in Italy as Il rosa Tiepolo by Adelphi Edizioni, Milan, in 2006"--T.p. verso.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

"A pleasure accompanied by light" -- Meridian theurgy -- Glory and solitude.

ISBN

9780307267665

LCCN

^^2009020011

OCLC

316029785

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library