ANNOTATION

Giambattista Tiepolo 1696-1770 is the catalogue of an exhibit that runs from January 24 to April 27 at Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum of Art. After some neglect in the 19th century, the Venetian painter's immense, decorative works are now ranked among the most spectacular of 18th-century paintings. Met curator Keith Christiansen has edited this highly accessible survey, which highlights Tiepolo's astonishing range and prodigious output. Both his dabblings in portrait painting and his mythological, historical and religious scenes, which adorn huge panels and ceilings in palaces, villas and churches across Europe, present a vision of the beautiful and the sensuous that will remind viewers of earlier Venetian masters Titian and Tintoretto.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This volume, which accompanies the tricentenary exhibition of Tiepolo's work held at the Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico in Venice and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, explores the various aspects of Tiepolo's artistic production. In essays and in entries on every work shown, eight American and European authorities illuminate his formation (still poorly understood); his mastery of mythological and poetic subjects; his deeply moving religious pictures; his rare excursions into portraiture and studies of ideal heads; and the process by which he proceeded from initial ideas - realized in dazzling small-scale oil sketches - to large canvases and frescoes. Written for the scholar and general reader alike, these texts are lavishly supported by illustrations of Tiepolo's works and those of his predecessors and contemporaries. A documented chronology of Tiepolo's life and art, detailed provenances, references, and a bibliography are provided.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booknews