Book Description

The greatest painter of eighteenth-century Italy, Giambattista Tiepolo was both a master of the vivid colors, palpable movement, and dramatic, emotional scenes that characterize baroque art, and an expert in the later rococo style, which ushered in a lighter palette and looser brushwork. In Tiepolo: The Complete Paintings, Filippo Pedrocco provides a comprehensive examination of the paintings produced by this remarkable artist. Though Tiepolo began his career in his native city of Venice, his artistic prowess quickly brought him into contact with some of Europe's most influential figures. Kings and queens, princes and patriarchs commissioned him to decorate the walls and ceilings of their palaces in Venice, Milan, and Würzburg with grand canvases and frescoes. Monks, nuns, and even archbishops requested religious paintings for their churches and cathedrals in Bergamo, Vicenza, and Nymphenburg. The patronage of the rich and powerful brought Tiepolo fame and a string of masterpieces to serve as his legacy. Included in this stunning volume are all of the artist's paintings, each illustrated and expertly discussed by the author, a specialist in Venetian painting. Experience both the large-scale decorative frescoes, many of which are still in situ and therefore not widely accessible to the general audience, and the smaller, yet equally moving altarpieces, such as the Martyrdom of Saint Agatha, executed for the famous pilgrimage church of Saint Anthony in Padua. Through Tiepolo's masterful art the lavish opulence of eighteenth-century Italy is vividly brought to life.
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Reviews (1)

3 Stars for the Reproductions
The magnificent reproductions are the only reason to buy this tremendously oversized coffee-table book. But keep a pulley-system on hand: it weighs two tons. This book is the great-grandchild of what were once known, somewhat fetishistically, as folios, lavishly produced books of reproductions too large to be accomodated vertically on library shelves and therefore shelved horizontally, often in locked cages, away from rapacious hands. Folios were brought out ceremoniously from their cages by special request, by suspicious white-gloved librarians and set up on wooden or foam stands. The ritual exercise heightened the sensation of being in the presence of something grand -- it reproduced the work of art itself, as well as the power of the sublime as experienced in the presence of the original work of art. Pedrocco's book achieves a similar effect. The text is negligible and unimaginative, but then again, who really goes to an exhibition to read the wall-texts? Lorried, pullied, or displayed on a roving stand, this is a major blockbuster on wheels. ... Read more

Book Description

This study by two brilliant and eminently readable art historians looks at Tiepolo`s works as an example of the specifically pictorial as distinguished from the verbal intelligence. Alpers and Baxandall show that Tiepolo`s greatness lies not in stories told, or in meanings pursued, but in the use of his visual medium-drawing, painting, and natural lighting. They conclude with a study of his best and biggest painting, The Four Continents at Wrzburg, newly photographed for this book. The book ends with an annotated gazetteer for travellers, listing those Tiepolo paintings that can still be seen in the places and conditions for which he painted them. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Don't paint a word
He favored an effect of light by skillfully contrasting finely unbroken and unmixed pigments with dully subdued colors, so that a golden ochre would bring out latent blue in a grey field or latent tawny in a muddy buff one. He also tended toward Veronese-type clouds to lighten and shape vaults with cumulus masses or stratus bands, as in his "Discovery of the true cross"; dogs to colorkey Cleopatra in "The banquet with Antony" and graphic and tonal range complexities in "The meeting of Antony and Cleopatra"; and poles to finetune viewer attention, as with his Santa Maria dei Gesuati ceiling frescoed pike to increase interest in the figure of St Dominic. Against expectations at the time about dramatically interacting figures, he parallel played arms, hands and heads, without bringing angled faces and pointing fingers together into any interpersonal contact, as Picassolike people deconstructed and divided into bodyparts. Also against usual practice, his painting was more caught up in a Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione-type showing and beholding than with discovery, as with "Adoration of the Magi" and "Institution of the rosary" handed down from heaven. The Veronese-style asymmetry of his figures lounging and lunging around picture edges, the princess off-center with her escort, the riverbank almost half-empty of figures, and the unexpected scale, with a miniature Miriam and a sliver of a dog, aggravated one critic into sawing "The finding of Moses" in two, with the severed part becoming known as "Landscape with halberdier." His preferred oblong format was considered just as aggravating in his "Madonna and saints," with its purgatorial rescue scene so drawn out on the left that another critic cut that painting temporarily into two. Along with Domenico di Pace Beccafumi, Duccio de Buoninsegna, Gentile da Fabriano, many Northern European painters, and Antonio Pisanello, he betrayed the tradition from Giotto, Masaccio and Raphael of putting a picture together as a framed rectangular window on proportionally scaled human figures in a definite space as verbally intelligent meaning- or story-painting to be seen from only one viewing point. But trend-bucking Giambattista TIEPOLO AND THE PICTORIAL INTELLIGENCE of his aesthetic, color-oriented and visually impacting works were behind successful fresco and oil on canvas painting throughout the North Italian 45th parallel cities of Bergamo, Milan, Trevigiana, Udine, Venice, Verona, Vicentina and Vicenza. His sculpturelike art was always part of and dependent on where it was displayed, taking in building form, layout and lighting: my sculptress mother always said, and my artist sister continues to say, that Tiepolo was not afraid of anything, and his biggest painting, "The four continents" fresco for the Wurzburg Residenz stairway hall ceiling, ended up one of the greatest and largest in Europe even though it was located off the beaten path and bravely doled unpicturelike changing light and odd angles to viewers needing to climb and walk around just to see it. So authors Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall leave readers with fresh insights into and new photography of Tiepolo's art: their book completes Bernard Aikema's TIEPOLO IN HOLLAND; William L Barcham's, Keith Christiansen's, and Michael Levey's works on GIAMBATTISTA TIEPOLO; and Adelheid M Gealt and George Knox's DOMENICO TIEPOLO. ... Read more

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Tieopolo's Human Comedy
This is a beautiful book. It's rare to find such large reproductions of drawings, all in color! (Most drawings, if not all are done in pen and brown ink with brown wash over black chalk.)

Twenty-six drawings whose locations are unknown appear in an appendix in black and white at the back of the book.

The text appears on the opposite page from each drawing. The author provides a brief, but helpful interpretation of each scene. Many of Tiepolo's references are not immediately familiar to the modern non-scholar reader, so a little guidance really enhances the visual experience.

Best of all is Tiepolo's delightful rendering of the human comedy. His Punchinellos are ridiculous, loveable, pathetic and even heroic or tragic. This is one of my favorite journeys with an old master.

The text also provides information regarding provenance, bibliography, exhibitions and current ownership. ... Read more

Book Description

Reviews (1)

"Coffee-table poetry and art"
Derek Walcott has always confessed his ambitions to be a painter of note.While poetry became his favourite wife, his love for painting never disappeared. Over the years he has continued to paint, and his art now decorates the covers of his poetry collections. "Tiepolo's Hound" seems one of the least personal of Walcott's books. While we get glimpses of the poet's life, he is more concerned to explore the life of Camille Pisarro to understand the heart of the individual bound to the calling of artist. It seems a tentative, searching exploration.Obviously identifying with their common Caribbean childhood and the influences of landscape and history they share, Walcott tries to see into the complex struggles of this artist who left the Caribbean for Paris, to become one of the fathers of impressionism.Seeking his epiphanic hound,he shares with us the painters who excited his artistic inspiration. Alongside his rhyming couplets he has placed twenty six of his own paintings-some very good, others less so.It is rare to find a book like this, coffetable poetry and art together by the same artist. Now seventy, this Nobel Laureate is not afraid to share his meditations on art and poetry-through art and poetry-warts and all.A collector's item.Walcott's readers must be patient with him, and try to go with him as he charts, quite bravely,his questionings of the artist's commitment and the cost."Whatever the age is, it lies in the small spring of poetry everywhere"(p66).A defining comment.Read "poetry" as the very heart of all art. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

a communion with the gods
When I was young I used to think that Tiepolo was a Renaissance painter.A contemporary of Raphael, I thought, perhaps a real live rival of Titian and Tintoretto. But as I found out this languorous painter was in reality an 18th C Venitian virtuoso. After a while, still in awe, I started to view him as a superb anachronism, and like he belonged, also, atop the Sistine Chapel somewhat.If Caravaggio astonishes with his inner turmoil. Tiepolo vis-a-vis seems to enjoy the purity of soul, of a monk. His brush seems pulled by a determined higher force. Christianity was sometimes his great medium, and he continuously uses every religious legend to express something divine that was in him, naturally. He is as pure as Praxiteles. And William Barcham deliniates Tiopolo's life as ordely and purposely as can be. The lucid preface, from Venice to Madrid. Tiepolo, a life, seemingly in a higher realm, dedicated to his art. But the many grandiose frescoes, beautifully illustrated here, don't need any words, really. ... Read more

Book Description

The full-length treatment in English of Tiepolo`s life and career. Examining in detail the genesis and the achievement of Tiepolo`s major accomplishments, and presenting a rich array of illustrations-some never before reproduced-Michael Levey presents the fullest possible evidence for a deeper understanding and enjoyment of the great Italian artist. ... Read more

Book Description

This digital document is an article from World Literature Today, published by University of Oklahoma on September 22, 2000. The length of the article is 24586 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Tiepolo's Hound.(Review)
Author: Jim Hannan
Publication: World Literature Today (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2000
Publisher: University of Oklahoma
Volume: 74Issue: 4Page: 797

Article Type: Book Review

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