The eighteenth-century Venetian painter Giambattista Tiepolo spent his life executing commissions in churches, palaces, and villas, often covering vast ceilings like those at the Würzburg Residenz in Germany and the Royal Palace in Madrid with frescoes that are among the glories of Western art. The life of an epoch swirled around him - but though his contemporaries appreciated and admired him, they failed to understand him.

Few have even attempted to tackle Tiepolo's series of thirty-three bizarre and haunting etchings, theCapricciand theScherzi, but Roberto Calasso rises to the challenge, interpreting these etchings as chapters in a dark narrative that contains the secret of Tiepolo's art. Blooming ephebes, female satyrs, Oriental sages, owls, snakes: we will find them all, including Punchinello and Death, within the pages of this book, along with Venus, Time, Moses, numerous angels, Cleopatra and Beatrice of Burgundy - a motley,gypsyishcompany always on the go.

Calasso makes clear that Tiepolo was more than a dazzling intermezzo in the history of painting. Rather, he represented a particular way of meeting the challenge of form: endowed with a fluid, seemingly effortless style, Tiepolo was the last incarnation of that peculiar Italian virtuesprezzatura, the art of not seeming artful.

Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi. He is the author ofThe Ruin of Kasch,The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which was the winner of the Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger,Literature and the Gods,KaandK.

Alastair McEwan has translated more than seventy books of fiction and non-fiction, including works by some of Italy's best-known writers: Baricco, Calasso, Eco, Tabucchi, and many more. He also writes occasional articles in both Italian and English for major newspapers.