Venetian Prints and Books in the Age of Tiepolo

The Republic of Venice, proud Queen of the Adriatic in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, had subsequently undergone a long, slow decline, and by the eighteenth century she could no longer impose peace but, rather, enjoyed it only at the price of a meek neutrality. Nonetheless, although politically weak and intellectually conservative, Venice in the eighteenth century was the site of an astounding creativity in all the visual arts, as well as in music and theater. The production of prints and books was enormous, and the percentage of leading artists making prints was unprecedented. To a great extent this output can be understood as a normal concomitant of the surrounding artistic activity, but some of its impetus may have derived from the economic need to attract visitors; these visitors, in turn, stimulated the volume of print and book publishing throughout the century. Giambattista Tiepolo and Antonio Canal, called Canaletto, twin stars, though in many aspects polar opposites, of Venetian painting in the eighteenth century, both created extraordinary series of etchings during the late 1730s and 1740s. [This book was originally published in 1997 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]