Art as Aphrodisiac at Kimbell's ‘Casanova' in Fort Worth

Get thee to Fort Worth to see the most exciting, confounding and utterly delightful exhibition of Old Master painting and sculpture (combined with superb decorative arts and costumes) that has ever graced North Texas. Its subject — Giacomo Casanova, the infamous rake born in Venice in 1725 — is both everywhere and nowhere as we walk through the galleries, and it is this sleight-of-hand link between works of art and a libertine of the Ancient Regime that makes the exhibition so special.Do you love masterpieces of painting? Well, no one will be disappointed on that score, and the exhibition begins with the single greatest view of Venice by its most famous visualizer, Canaletto (whose real name, for the record, was Giovanni Antonio Canal) and his St. Mark's Basin from the Museum of Fine Arts Boston. Painted when Casanova was a precocious 13 years old, this masterpiece presents his city as a glittering world of trade and cultural connection. And, by the time Casanova was 35, he had been to almost all the places whose boats and ships fill Canaletto's harbor.  Continue reading...

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