Pleasure, Light, Glory
da: The New York Times
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…
