Customer Reviews

Domenico Tiepolo: A New Testament

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With 313 large scale colour plates, this handsomely produced and pleasantly designed book allows art lovers to savour to the full the exquisite draughtsmanship and fertile imagination of what must surely be one of the most extraordinary biblical cycles of the 18th century. I can imagine no one who is even remotely interested in 18 th century religious art who would not want to add this book to their collection.

As to the text, the authors have most assiduously accumulated a vast quantity of material on pictorial and literary sources and traditions, which is likely to turn the book into a useful reference tool for iconographic matters well beyond the book's immediate concerns.; there is also as much factual information about the genesis of the series and ist subsequent fate as anyone can possilby provide today.

When it comes to intellectually stimulating insights into Domenico's highly idiosyncratic art, however, the book is somewhat disappointing. There is a fair amount of elevated prattle that does not really take us anywhere ("He [Domenico] reinforced his reality with the authority of dogma, refreshed history by giving it the appearance of eyewitness reportage" etc., p. 65), and following threads of motives and themes is all very well but often does not probe very deeply into Domenico's artistic mind; in an exhaustive series of bible illustrations you would expect quite a lot of "fathers and sons, mothers and sons", "greetings and partings, exits and entrances", "deaths and funerals", wouldn't you, whoever designed the series. What the authors should rather have done is extend the section on particular structural devices characteristic of Domenico's way of organizing biblical incidents, and, to be sure, there are quite a few. As it is, the authors refer only to the technique of "cutoffs", but it cannot, e. g., have escaped their notice that one of the most striking recurrent features is the tension between empty or sparsely structured spaces, austere, even forbidding architectural settings and grid-like patterned areas (such as brick walls) on the one hand and vibrantly outlined figures, quite often congealing into dense or even all but impenetrable clusters, on the other hand.

Another oddity is that each author supplies his or her own separate commentary for every individual drawing; as these commentaries at least partially cover similar ground, they should surely have been merged into just one coherent text for every drawing. As they stand, the commetaries are of varying interest; at their worst, they would have vastly benefited from serious editorial interference, such as the inconclusive ramblings on what may or may not de depicted on plate 302.

Notwithstanding all these shortcomings, gratitude is due to the authors' and the publisher's efforts to make a magnificent achievement of 18th century art accessible to a wide audience. If Tiepolo is a name you treasure, do buy a copy.

This is an extraordinary example of contemporary scholarship in both art history and Christianity. The "Tiepolo Code" as described by Gealt and Knox is a wonderful, complex and compelling story.
The book itself is beautifully rendered in rich color which brings the drawing themselves to life.

An incredible survey of the complete (known) drawings of Domenico Tiepolo related to the life of Christ and the subsequent adventures of his disciples. It covers the drawings of a master reflecting not only on typical New Testament subjects (the flight to Egypt, the life of Christ, the missions of Peter and Paul), but also those of extra-biblical sources such as the Acts of Peter (the fall of Simon Magus) and the Little Flowers of St. Francis (St. Anthony preaching to the fish).

Each of the more than three hundred drawings is displayed on the right, with the facing page suggesting a literary origin. Further detail on artistic background of the drawings follows in an appendix. A coffee-table book to keep on a high shelf, if you are strong enough to lift it! Published in concord with an exhibit at the Frick Collection in New York City.