Tiepolo Pink

. I love Tiepolo. To some of my art-fancying friends, as well as to many a critic of painting, this is a sign of frivolity, if not moral degeneration; but to others, just the mention of Tiepolo’s name provokes a smile, even a grin, of shared delight. Whose colors are like Tiepolo’s, with their cool, almost pastel surfaces, their outré tonal combinations, the sudden intrusions of dark and of bursting light? Above all, whose compositions are like his, with cherubs flying and falling, as if gravity had snapped to after a moment of inattention? The kind of painter Tiepolo is means that an arid, academic or tedious book about him would be a special offense; in TIEPOLO PINK (Knopf, 2009) the Italian writer Roberto Calasso approaches the eighteenth-century Venetian painter as the final European master of sprezzatura—he calls him “the last breath of happiness in Europe”—and explores his work with affection, insight and a marvelous congruence of temper. Sprezzatura Castiglione characterizes as “a certain nonchalance that may conceal art and demonstrate that what ones does and says one does without effort and almost without thought.” For him it was the “complete contrast” to affectation; I’ve seen it translated as “effortless mastery”. In Tiepolo’s exuberant and airborne scenes there is often a drama afoot just a bit beyond easy explanation, and Calasso approaches this mystery—Tiepolo’s “particular way of meeting the challenge of form”—not just via the ceilings and canvases but by the lesser known etchings, the Capricci and Scherzi. Throughout he defends Tiepolo against the dispraises of Longhi and other critics with just the right gravity of manner—the courtesy of erudition and the joy of complete involvement. TIEPOLO PINK is a handsome book, a grave delight, and no poor example of sprezzatura itself. Castiglione’s last word on the topic: “From this, I believe, does much grace arrive.” Brava.