Tiepolo Blue: 'The best novel I have read for ages' Stephen Fry

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When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don's abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho.

Meticulous and atmospheric . . . delicious unease and pervasive threat give this assured first novel great singularity and a kind of gothic edge’ Michael Donkor, Guardian When an explosive piece of contemporary art is installed on the lawn of his college, it sets in motion Don’s abrupt departure from Cambridge to take up a role at a south London museum. There he befriends Ben, a young artist who draws him into the anarchic 1990s British art scene and the nightlife of Soho. Ejected from his safe yet stultifying academic life, the central character, Don, is an art historian who seems, like the stereotype of his scholarly kind, to be as stunningly naive about life as he is is brilliant in his subject area.In a series of Discourse in Art lectures spanning the decade immediately after Tiepolo's death, Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first president of the British Royal Academy, called Tiepolo the first master of what he called the Grand Manner. Reynolds's argument was that, in a return to the styles of the ancient Greeks and Romans, Grand Manner art should devote itself not so much to accuracy and fine natural detail but rather to "the grand style of invention, to composition, to expression, and even coloring drapery." Indeed, a golden thread runs from Byzantine art via Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese to Tiepolo; and from Tiepolo to Fragonard.

Ashby, Chloë (6 June 2022). "Old Master meets YBAs: James Cahill tells us all about his debut novel". The Art Newspaper . Retrieved 8 December 2022. A novel that combines formal elegance with gripping storytelling . . . wildly enjoyable’ Financial Times I'm going to be lazy and just refer those interested to the incisive Guardian review below, but let me just end by saying this is one of the most beautifully bound volumes I've seen in recent years - not only the gorgeous gold embossed cover, but also full color endpapers of one of the titular artist's masterpieces. Highly recommended, and quite possibly my #1 book of the year. I almost gave up on this book about a quarter of the way through. But I a so glad that I didn’t! It took me a while to really get into but once I did I thoroughly enjoyed it.There is a seamy and sordid side to Don's new life in the wide world, with descriptions that could have been crudely handled. No spoiler here, but hats off to the author for the way he deftly plumbed the depths of his character's latent sexuality without making me cringe. The Glory of Spain is a brilliant fusion of elements drawn from his previous work including decorative features from his time in residence at the Würzburg and his frescoes at the spectacular Villa Pisani in Stra (situated on the canal linking Venice and Padua). Tiepolo had in fact completed the oil sketches for The Glory of Spain before leaving Venice. However, on arrival at the palace, Tiepolo was faced with the problem of decorating a throne room with inadequate natural light sources. His chromatic oil sketches could not therefore be fully realized. There is then a degree of imposed improvisation in the way Tiepolo, to compensate for the relatively subdued chromatic treatment, created his largest ever empty expanse of sky. Tiepolo left enough room in his painting to let the eye of the spectator fill in the blanks; allowing them in effect to bring their own interpretations to the scene. It is this aspect of his method perhaps that would exert such a profound influence on the likes of Fragonard, Delacroix and Goya all of whom sought to use art to invoke the imagination of the spectator through open space.

Following the defeat of the Nazis in 1945, the idea took hold that Austria had been the first casualty of Hitler’s aggression when in 1938 it was incorporated into the Third Reich.’ in theory i'm always up for a book about a disastrous cambridge closet case, but i wasn't a fan of this one. heads up beforehand that the art criticism is cool and the setting and place is done well, and that other people seem to like this one more than i do. however.Ben turns and grins ironically. ‘When you stopped just now and looked at the sky, you weren’t measuring it. You weren’t thinking about classical proportion. You were feeling something.’