a single, unified movement, related to one another as a musical prelude is related to a fugue. Taken together, they form a sort of mute book or novel without words, telling a story that no eighteenth century novelist managed to narrate. There is not a straight plot, so much as a cast of characters and a set of episodes through which they pass. As a consequence, each etching represents a potential beginning or middle or ending, depending on a viewer’s perception of the whole.

If there is a unifying theme to Tiepolo’s work, it is magicthe white magic of the Neoplatonic magus who draws power from stars and from herbs and other substances that stars influence. Magicians of this sort exploited the occult, literally “the hidden,” connections between the heavens and the earth, connections that extended to the human being as the epitome of creation. Such magic was “natural” because it depended on nothing outside of natureno devils were invoked, only spirits of the created elements and the heavens above. In the Italian Renaissance, this magic was thought to be a part of natural philosophy, advocated by such giants as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. It was a means of gaining insight into the mysteries of creation. By Tiepolo’s day, it had fallen into neglect, displaced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. However, it had been preserved in images, notably in the emblems of illustrators such as Andrea Alciato. Calasso suggests that Tiepolo intuited the art of magic from images he could have seen in such designs as the mosaic of Hermes Trismegistus in the Sienna cathedral.

Thus, a long discourse on Neoplatonic ideas and images concludes the second part of this book, titled “Meridian Theurgy.” Theurgy is literally the work of gods, and the Neoplatonists spoke about the powers of gods such as Venus and Mars emanating from the planets of those names and from the ideas that gave birth to those planets. The meridian, meanwhile, is the midline along which the magus brings these ideas to life in material shapes. Without attributing any special wisdom to Tiepolo, Calasso suggests that the Scherzi have much to say about wisdomfor example, the wisdom of the serpent, who tempted the first humans with the promise that they would be as gods, knowing the difference between good and evil. Noting that almost all the Scherzi concern the act of seeing, one way or another, Calasso suggests further that the whole series should be considered visionary art.

The large cast of characters in the engravings features several that Calasso describes collectively as “Orientals”African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and New World figures, each with a distinctly non-European cast. (The Italian term orientali has not suffered the same devaluation as its English translation has recently.) Often in elaborate costumes, with turbans and feathered headdresses and flowing robes, these Orientals represent knowledge, power, and arts that are sometimes at odds with those of the Enlightenment in Europe, sometimes complementary to them. These figures appear throughout the book’s final section, “Glory and Solitude,” and in the paintings of Tiepolo’s final years that Calasso discusses there.

This final section of Calasso’s text opens with a study of eleven paintings, frescoes, and sketches of Antony and Cleopatra, all showing a supremely confident, even impudent, queen of Egypt and a Roman invader who is not equal to the task at hand. It should not seem entirely strange that the descendant of one of Venice’s oldest families would arrive at this perspective. Venice, the “queen of the seas,” had equally ancient ties with Moorish traders from Spain, Africa, and the Levant. Tiepolo took this Venetian perspective with him when he went north at the beckoning of a German prince. The prince wanted magnificent frescoes for his new residence, and he had the wealth and connections to bring Tiepolo and his sons to execute them.

Tiepolo’s large frescoes in the Würzburg Residenz have been much studied, but Calasso brings a fresh perspective to them by showing how the artist responded to the assignments he was given. Directed to paint the marriage of Frederick Barbarosa between the upper windows at one end of the great hall, Tiepolo gave the twelfth century emperor a bride who radiates sovereignty with the supreme self-confidence of his Cleopatras. As do other frescoes in the Residenz, this representation seems to revel in the display of authority. Calasso suggests there is a certain irony to the painting: Tiepolo must have realized that the prince’s power was largely illusory in a Germany dominated by the Prussian state to the north, and he must have gloried in the sheer illusion that the new building projected. “The more unreal the power he was celebrating,” Calasso concludes, “the more nimble his hand became.”

Tiepolo’s final assignment was altogether less satisfactory. Summoned by Charles III of Spain, he decorated the throne room in the Royal Palace and painted scenes for altars in Madrid churches, but he ran into rivals and critics who were closer to the king. His style was mocked as overblown in comparison to the emerging Neoclassicism, and his altar paintings were replaced soon after he died on the job. Even here, Calasso notes, Tiepolo used his Orientals to critique the very real power he was meant to celebrate, this time in the guise of New World subjects whose innate sovereignty could not be denied.

Tiepolo has never lacked for scholars to study him, but even the specialists have praised Calasso for his work on the etchings. Reviewing recent books on the artist for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Johanna Fassl of Columbia University’s program in Venice admires Calasso’s treatment of dissonant, disturbing elements. Where others have tended to dismiss these as mere ornaments, she writes, he has shown that they are integral to the whole. Nevertheless, he has not forced his literary perspective on the series, for he has freely admitted the ambiguities. Early reviewers of Alastair McEwan’s quite literal translation have found that the book holds together nicely. A reviewer for the Los Angeles Times compares the book’s style to that of a compelling novel, and indeed McEwan’s earlier ventures in translation from the Italian have included books by the novelists Alain Aikann and Fleur Jaeggy.

The hardcover edition is handsomely printed in Singapore on smooth paper and includes eighty-two illustrations scattered throughout the body of the text, most of them in full color. The illustrations have a softer quality than they would in a separate section printed on glossy stock and thus give a better impression of the originals. The page format is kept simple by an appended section of notes on “sources,” keyed to page and line number. There is also a section on “images,” noting the title, medium, and ownership of each illustration. The lack of captions beneath illustrations makes for a lot of page turning, as the connection of image and title is not always obvious from the text itself. That is a minor complaint, however, about a beautiful book. One may also note a very few errors of fact, which are almost inevitable in a book with such a wide range of reference. For example, the “De Bry brothers” whose engravings graced early books about the New World were in fact father and son.

Calasso has enough of the magpie in him to revel in gossip about Tiepolo. Several rumors involve his wife of many years, Cecilia Tiepolo, who took to gambling during his long absences from Venice. When she was losing, as she often did, she is said to have used his drawings and paintings, even his studio and house, as collateral. Because Calasso ends the book with a meditation on Tiepolo’s frequent pairings of old men and young women, it may be appropriate to add a recent anecdote involving the painting of “Time Unveiling Truth,” which Calasso discusses in the opening section. In 2008, the Italian prime minister had a reproduction of this painting retouched so that Truth’s bared bosom would not distract audiences during television interviews. Whatever this says about truth, power, illusion would not have escaped the painter as Calasso presents him.