"This book represents a contribution of the highest value to our knowledge of art and the artistic imagination at a critical moment in its history, the culmination of the long Renaissance tradition of thematic invention and variation." —David Rosand, Meyer Schapiro Professor of Art History, Columbia University
"A landmark in the history of art." —John W. O'Malley, S.J., Weston Jesuit School of Theology
"Gealt and Knox have undertaken an investigatory enterprise at once physical, intellectual, historical, and artistic, altogether rare in the recent annals of modern art history." —William Barcham, Fashion Institute of Technology
In this major new work of art history, Adelheid M. Gealt and George Knox assemble, present, and document for the first time a cycle of 313 drawings of scenes from the New Testament by the 18th-century Venetian draftsman Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804). When Domenico died in 1804, the drawings were dispersed among various purchasers. Locating, identifying, and documenting them required years of detective work by Gealt and Knox. This book presents the fruit of their labors and is a treasure that any art lover will wish to own. The book will accompany an exhibition to open October 2006 at The Frick Collection in New York.
Introductory chapters by Knox and Gealt provide a history of the drawings and a discussion of the literary and pictorial traditions in which Domenico worked and the complexities of his narrative approach. The heart of the book is a catalog of full-color reproductions of the drawings, arranged to follow the New Testament narrative from the lives of Joachim and Anna (Christ's grandparents) through the acts of Peter and Paul. The accompanying text includes the biblical passages depicted in each drawing, synopses of the stories that Domenico tells, and commentaries. A reference section provides further information on the traditions of iconography and on the biblical and historical sources reflected in Domenico Tiepolo's work.
