A nonchalence of endowments
By Arthur C. Danto |
January 3, 2010, Sunday
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Print Edition
Print Edition
IN 2007, The New Yorker printed a cartoon by George Booth, showing a tiny artist on a scaffold, feverishly covering the wall of a vast room, having finished the ceiling. A kibitzer, standing in the doorway, says: "Why, Giambattista Tiepolo, you old so-and-so! Who knew you could paint?" Whatever Booth intended, the cartoon is not without a certain art historical truth, if Roberto Calasso is on the mark.
According to him, Tiepolo (1696-1770) was a master of sprezzatura, a virtue much prized in the Renaissance courtier. The word has no exact equivalent in English, but it refers to a kind of nonchalance regarding one's endowments, in art and in life, so that one just might be a great painter without anyone knowing one could paint. Sprezzatura is discussed by Baldassare Castiglione in "The Book of the Courtier," a guide to courtly conduct. The courtier must "conceal all art and make whatever is done and said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought."
Tiepolo brought the Rococo style to a flamboyant climax, which does not quite suggest the self-restraint of sprezzatura, but Calasso bases his claim on a body of 23 etchings that the artist called Scherzi, or "jokes." Tiepolo "did his utmost to conceal, behind his blinding speed of execution, the subtly aberrant nature of his subjects to the point that he succeeded in having his most daring and enigmatic works, the Scherzi, passed off as facile amusements."
He implies that the Scherzi are, collectively, an esoteric masterpiece, dense with erudite references, disguised as so many cartoons.
Dazzling learning
Fully a third of the book is devoted to the decoding of these somewhat mysterious images, and one must say that it enables the author to demonstrate his dazzling learning and his powers of observation; it is in this sense the very opposite of sprezzatura. Each of the Scherzi shows an odd cast of characters, clustered with animals, alongside a half-buried ruin, bearing an ancient inscription.
There is typically a bearded older man with a turban or some kind of ritual headgear, a young woman, some children, a half-nude man who may be a shepherd, and sometimes a punchinello.
These personages are accompanied by owls, donkeys, goats, dogs and snakes, all grouped on a hillock in a landscape reminiscent of the Campagna, outside Rome. "Why are there so many snakes in the Scherzi?" Calasso asks. There follow 20 pages of information about snakes.
The section or chapter on the Scherzi is preceded by "OA Pleasure Accompanied by Light" and followed by the last of the book's three chapters, "Glory and Solitude." The writing is like an Impressionist painting -- a dab of criticism, a dot of psychology, a dash of history. In some way, a portrait of Tiepolo emerges, but it does not, I feel, add up to a portrait of one of the greatest artists of the 18th century.
In the early going, the closest Calasso comes to discussing Tiepolo's lyrical greatness is when he considers "The Finding of Moses."
According to him, Tiepolo (1696-1770) was a master of sprezzatura, a virtue much prized in the Renaissance courtier. The word has no exact equivalent in English, but it refers to a kind of nonchalance regarding one's endowments, in art and in life, so that one just might be a great painter without anyone knowing one could paint. Sprezzatura is discussed by Baldassare Castiglione in "The Book of the Courtier," a guide to courtly conduct. The courtier must "conceal all art and make whatever is done and said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought."
Tiepolo brought the Rococo style to a flamboyant climax, which does not quite suggest the self-restraint of sprezzatura, but Calasso bases his claim on a body of 23 etchings that the artist called Scherzi, or "jokes." Tiepolo "did his utmost to conceal, behind his blinding speed of execution, the subtly aberrant nature of his subjects to the point that he succeeded in having his most daring and enigmatic works, the Scherzi, passed off as facile amusements."
He implies that the Scherzi are, collectively, an esoteric masterpiece, dense with erudite references, disguised as so many cartoons.
Dazzling learning
Fully a third of the book is devoted to the decoding of these somewhat mysterious images, and one must say that it enables the author to demonstrate his dazzling learning and his powers of observation; it is in this sense the very opposite of sprezzatura. Each of the Scherzi shows an odd cast of characters, clustered with animals, alongside a half-buried ruin, bearing an ancient inscription.
There is typically a bearded older man with a turban or some kind of ritual headgear, a young woman, some children, a half-nude man who may be a shepherd, and sometimes a punchinello.
These personages are accompanied by owls, donkeys, goats, dogs and snakes, all grouped on a hillock in a landscape reminiscent of the Campagna, outside Rome. "Why are there so many snakes in the Scherzi?" Calasso asks. There follow 20 pages of information about snakes.
The section or chapter on the Scherzi is preceded by "OA Pleasure Accompanied by Light" and followed by the last of the book's three chapters, "Glory and Solitude." The writing is like an Impressionist painting -- a dab of criticism, a dot of psychology, a dash of history. In some way, a portrait of Tiepolo emerges, but it does not, I feel, add up to a portrait of one of the greatest artists of the 18th century.
In the early going, the closest Calasso comes to discussing Tiepolo's lyrical greatness is when he considers "The Finding of Moses."
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