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Article: "His Lyre is now attuned only to woe".(ABOUT THE COVER)(Cover story)
- Article from:
- Emerging Infectious Diseases
- Article date:
- May 1, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2008 U.S. National Center for Infectious Diseases. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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--Petrarch
"Dreams and fables I fashion," wrote 18th-century Italian poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, "and even while I sketch elaborate fables and dreams upon paper ... I so enter into them that I weep and am offended at ills I invented" (1). Metastasio might have been describing the work of his contemporary Giambattista Tiepolo, whose art blended history, mythology, legend, and scripture in a grand manner. His frescoes, which graced the palaces and princely courts of Europe, embodied the notion popular in his day that painting, like theater and opera, was staged fiction and should engage the viewer on an imaginary level (2).
Tiepolo was born in ...