Ciao, Carpaccio!: An Infatuation - Tapa dura

Morris lends an overlooked master a fresh lease of imaginative life By showing us how to look with an inquisitive eye, how to respond as living people, with our own preferences and tastes, she reminds us anew of the purpose and pleasure of art. What she presents is a vignette of human kindness. --Rachel Campbell-Johnson"

In the course of writing Venice, her 1961 classic, Jan Morris became fascinated by the historical presence of a sometimes-overlooked Venetian painter. Nowadays the name of Vittore Carpaccio (1460 1520) suggests raw beef, but to Morris it conveyed far more profound meanings. Thus began a lifelong infatuation, reaching across the centuries, between a renowned Welsh writer and a great and delightfully entertaining artist of the early Renaissance. Handsomely designed with more than seventy photographs throughout, Ciao, Carpaccio! is a happy caprice of affection. In illuminating the life of the artist and his paintings, Morris throws in digressions about Venetian animals, courtesans, babies, ships, architecture, and history, and caps it all with thoughtful analyses of Carpaccio s spiritual convictions. Part biography, part art interpretation, part personal odyssey, and all lots of fun, Ciao, Carpaccio! will no doubt help to rescue the name of a noble artist from its popular interpretation as an item of cuisine."