Roberto Calasso's newest book, //Tiepolo Pink//, is a study of Giambattista Tiepolo (1695-1769), a classic Venetian painter of the Rococo period. Calasso must no doubt be the foremost authority on this Old Master who has largely been left to history, and he brings an incredible amount of insight and research to his subject. However, this book is by no means for the casual reader, as his references are often unexplained and his allusions at times hard to follow. For example, Calasso fixates, without much explanation, on Tiepolo's //sprezzatura//, or the Italian art of executing great works effortlessly, and fills his book with sentences like "Tiepolo: the last breath of happiness in Europe" without any further elaboration.
Perhaps of most interest to the art history community is that Calasso spends almost a third of his book addressing Tiepolo's strange and unexplained series of drawings called the //Scherzi//. These untitled drawings feature a crew of satyrs, owls, "Orientals," and maidens that, according to Calasso, foreshadow the modern era of painting. In the end, //Tiepolo Pink// is much like jumping into a graduate-level art history class midterm: you might not get all of the references, but the professor's passion keeps you paying attention.
Reviewed by Margo Orlando LittellGet more detail about Tiepolo Pink.
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