by Ben Lima | 18 April 2010 | Baroque/Neoclassical, Books
Roberto Calasso’s book, Tiepolo Pink (translated by Alastair McEwen for Knopf), which proposes the 23 etchings of the Scherzi di fantasia as an interpretive key, has elicited mixed reactions from a number of reviewers.
Henry James refers to “a pompous Tiepolo ceiling”, but pompous is the last thing they are. As Calasso points out, “the Würzburg ceiling is an anthropological experiment. For the first time and – until today – the only time, we find assembled here a literally ecumenical humanity, idiosyncratic and in reciprocal contact”. Everyone is whirled round, the bishops and emperors looking somewhat queasy as they are buffeted and jostled by tobacco traders, and blonde bare-breasted divinities, and pageboys with chocolate pots, musicians in spectacles, dogs and alligators and bulls and beggars and soldiers and bales of firewood and of course those impassive Orientals, to whom Orientalism is the last word to apply. This blown-about caravan picks up all sorts, as comprehensive in its intake as Joyce’s Dublin or Dickens’s London.
Arthur Danto in the NYT Book Review:
Pleasure, light and glory are among the defining attributes of Tiepolo as an artist, who depicts beautiful people, magnificently dressed and coiffed, posed in theatrical settings. But Calasso mostly attempts to disclose facets of the artist’s style and personality through bursts of unconnected truths. We find a passage about Tiepolo and Veronese; about Baudelaire and Boudin (since Baudelaire knew nothing about Tiepolo); about Tiepolo’s personality, such as it was; about why the critic Roberto Longhi compared Tiepolo unfavorably with Caravaggio; about Tiepolo’s theatricality; about how Proust refers to Tiepolo’s colors in describing the wardrobe of the three women who embody Proust’s world — the courtesan Odette, the aristocratic Duchess of Guermantes and the eroticist Albertine; about Tiepolo’s vocabulary of forms, followed by a comparison between Veronese’s and Tiepolo’s “Finding of Moses” — touching on “Tiepolo’s most caustic work ‘Danae and Jupiter.’ ”
Calasso confidently generalises about Europe yet admits that for him the continent is “an extension of Venice”. Though he praises the “ecumenical humanity” in Tiepolo’s paintings, his own sympathies remain partisan, even xenophobic. He can’t forgive the French for the revolution or for their “feeling of sovereignty”; he pities Tiepolo for having to deal with Spanish patrons who cared only for “honour and dignity”, not “the modality of appearance”; and he rebukes Michael Levey for dismissing the Scherzi as amiable oddities “in a typically English manner”.
Such asides point up the peculiarly national bent of Calasso’s sensibility. His absorption in pre-Christian mysteries is a symptom of Italy’s unashamed paganism.
Bartolomeo Piccolomini in Open Letters Monthly:
No, the dread comes from the fact that as a writer, Calasso is so full of cow crap that if you planted seeds in his cerebellum in midsummer, you’d have a bumper crop of pumpkins come autumn. His many admirers have tripped over themselves to excuse – or honor – the fact that in his prose he often seems not to know what he’s doing or what points he’s making, probably because in certain literary circles even pure twaddle will get the laurel as long as it’s ineffable twaddle.
Roberto Longhi, pourtant peu indulgent à son égard, disait qu’il était «un Véronèse après la pluie».
Comme il y a un délire de la fantaisie chez Tiepolo (qui n’a pas admiré son plafond peint de la Residenz de Würzburg ne saura jamais ce qu’est le bonheur fou de la peinture), il existe une même virtuosité de l’interprétation et de l’érudition chez Calasso. Etrange paradoxe!
Dario Olivero in La Repubblica:
Calasso ragiona per pagine e pagine su questo suo concittadino, sulla facilità e la destrezza della sua mano, su come i suoi colori colpirono Proust, su come i suoi contemporanei, pur apprezzandone la grande capacità di far convivere l’intento edificante di certi suoi lavori con la grazia nuda delle forme femminili, lo considerassero poco più di un epigono del Veronese, di come Longhi lo capì ma lo liquidò con insofferenza quasi sospetta, della difficoltà di trovare notizie sulla sua vita al punto che, se non avessimo i suoi dipinti a testimoniarlo, saremmo quasi autorizzati a dubitarne.
[UPDATE]
John Banville reviews Calasso in “The Idolatry of Light,” New Republic (4/29/10).
Interesting how the reviews tend to take a personal tone, and how widely varied the assessments of Calasso’s basic premises are.