Volume 42, Number 16 · October 19, 1995
The Triumphs of Tiepolo
By Hugh Honour
Tiepolo and the Pictorial Intelligence
by Svetlana Alpers, by Michael Baxandall
Yale University Press, 186 pp., $50.00
The Glory of Venice: Art in the Eighteenth Century National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Palazzo Rezzonico, Venice
edited by Jane Martineau, edited by Andrew Robison. Catalog of the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London;
Yale University Press, 528 pp., $39.95 (paper)
The publication of a book on Giovanni Battista Tiepolo by Svetlana Alpers and Michael Baxandall, two of the most stimulating contemporary writers on the history of art, was unexpected. Alpers, known mainly for her work on Dutch and Flemish painting, has consistently sought an alternative to the way in which 'the study of art and its history has been determined by the art of Italy and its study.'[1] The results have been illuminating, most recently in her Rembrandt's Enterprise: The Studio and the Market.[2] Baxandall began no less probingly with two brief but now classic studies on Florentine painting of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, then went on to publish a brilliant account of the Limewood sculptors of Renaissance Germany, followed by Patterns of Intention,[3] an inquiry into the goals that artists set themselves or that were set for them by their public. Both authors teach at the lively—some would say trendy—department of the history of art at Berkeley. In their new book they tackle problems of wider relevance for an understanding of art, and not simply its history, than their provocatively untrendy subject might sug-gest. Neither has been a member of the clique of scholars specializing in Venetian art of the eighteenth century—and their book is all the better for it.
Review, 4726 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |