There is something terrifying and lurking underneath this book, much like the art he spends all day observing. The best novel I have read for ages. My heart was constantly in my throat as I read . . . There is so much to enjoy, to contemplate, to wonder at, and to be lost in' Stephen Fry A few things bothered me… firstly a few of the London locations where a bit all over the place, including a bar in the book called The Sphinx, which is clearly meant to be The Vauxhall Tavern. Carhill locates The Sphinx in Hern Hill, but then inside the bar he included customers talking about Vauxhall. Perhaps Carhill included this to give a clue as to the bar’s real inspiration… but it’s just a bit too messy for me. (Incidentally according to local queer legend, the comment about Princess Di and Freddie Mercury is true!) Apollo and the Continents (1752-53), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s ceiling fresco at the Würzburg Residence in Bavaria, Germany. In James Cahill’s debut novel, Tiepolo Blue, art historian Don is captivated by the Venetian master’s skies, which have similarly fascinated the author—in particular, the artist’s use of a distinctive shade of blue changes have been made to the relevant jurisdiction for disputes which may arise out of your use of the platform.

There is some debate as to when this fresco was painted, but in all likelihood, it was undertaken between 1716-19. It adorns the ceiling of the Parish Church of Biadene, near Treviso, Italy and shows the Virgin bound for Heaven borne on a cloud, flanked by a number of angels and putti. Ugaz’s case is all too familiar in Peru, where powerful groups regularly use the courts to silence journalists by fabricating criminal allegations against them.’ It is, I accept, a clever enough work which does pass the time quite well, but I kept having the nagging feeling that this kind of thing has been done before, and the closest comparison I can think of is with Martin Amis’s Money, in which the main character finds that he has been the unknowing – until the very end – victim of a years-long conspiracy of vengeance for an offence committed long in the past. (Unlike Money, though, it is not trying to be funny.) The thing is that one doesn’t really read Amis for the plot, but the language; it’s kind of the other way round with this novel. How to rate an unfinished novel? I recognized good penmanship and the narration was great. But the storEileen M Hunt: Feminism vs Big Brother - Wifedom: Mrs Orwell’s Invisible Life by Anna Funder; Julia by Sandra Newman 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. The embodiment of the verve and unpredictability of this cityscape is artist Ben, a mercurial enfant terrible who breezily challenges Don’s dusty wisdoms, shows him the delights of Soho, takes him to openings of provocative and punky exhibitions. He instigates in Don “a mental rewiring, a vital recalibration”. Occasionally, I wondered if Ben was rendered as sufficiently charismatic to justify Don’s attentions and ardour. What is powerful here, however, is Cahill’s charged depiction of Don’s psychosexual awakening. Don’s desire for Ben is presented as distorting, dangerous, strange – capable of undoing the new life Don is trying to establish for himself in London.

I was gripped by the way this story unravels to show us the life of Don Lamb, a professor at Cambridge who is obsessed with the artwork of Tiepolo, and whose various disgraces and scandals seem to layer as he progresses through life.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. Set in the mid-90s, Tiepolo Blue follows Don Lamb, professor of art history at Peterhouse, Cambridge, who has led a life so attenuated he knows little or nothing of the world outside of his college until he’s thrust onto the London gallery circuit. I wanted an experience where my eyes were opened to the beauty of new art but instead, I found myself drawn into a world of horrible people who had no reason to be. Biography: James Cahill was born in London. Over the past decade, he has worked in the art world and academia, combining writing and research with a role at a leading contemporary art gallery. He is currently a Research Fellow in Classics at King’s College London. His writing on art has appeared in publications including The Burlington Magazine, The Times Literary Supplement,the Los Angeles Review of Books,and The London Review of Books.He was theleadauthorand consulting editor ofFLYING TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN (Phaidon, 2018), a survey of classical myth in art from antiquity to the present day. He was the co-curator of ‘The Classical Now’, an exhibition at King’s College London (March-April 2018), examining the relationships between ancient, modern and contemporary art.

My deep thanks go to Hodder & Stoughton for an advanced digital copy through Netgalley in exchange for review. 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.Don is consumed by the skies of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. What is your relationship with the Venetian master? Don sees the world through an art historian’s eyes, and at one point the enigmatic young artist, Ben, says to him: “It’s possible to be too discriminating… You stop seeing the thing for what it is.” In writing the book, did you have to consciously stop thinking as an academic and start thinking as a novelist?