The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces, and villas, covering vast ceilings like those at the Wurzburg Residenz in Germany and the Royal Palace in Madrid with frescoes that are among the glories of Western art. And he represented a particular way of meeting the challenge of form: endowed with fluid, seemingly effortless style, he was the last incarnation of that peculiar Italian virtue "sprezzatura, " the art of not seeming artful.
Few have even attempted to tackle Tiepolo's series of thirty-three bizarre and haunting etchings, the "Capricci" and the "Scherzi." Roberto Calasso rises to the challenge, interpreting these etchings as chapters in a dark narrative that contains the secret of Tiepolo's art.