Painting in Eighteenth-Century Venice

Rating:
Summary: Informative, but too traditional
Review: This book first published in the 1950's, and re-editioned three times, still rings of old-world art history, and champions the idea of artistic genius too strongly. Levey's genuine passion for Venetian art of the 18th century, particularily of G.B. Tiepolo, and his powers of descriotion as an art historian come through remarkably well in the text. He sections the book off into chapters each dealing with another genre practiced in the city in the 18th century. But one theme runs through all of the chapters regardless of the genre he is telling us about and that is that all lines lead to Tiepolo. He champions Tiepolo at the expense of all other painters working at the time, and this is not exactly the case. More recent scholarship has shown the culture and the history to be more nuanced. But Levey is still the best place to start, and this edition, in which the images are reproduced for the first time in color, is well-worth a read for anyone interested in the topic.