Casanova: The Seduction of Europe

Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, through Dec. 31

Though Giacomo Casanova is remembered as history’s greatest lover, “he should be declared the patron saint of publicists,” said Gaile Robinson in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The peripatetic Venetian (1725–1798) traveled widely throughout Europe, working at times as a lawyer, clergyman, con man, soldier, and translator, yet he immortalized himself by writing a nine-volume memoir that details trysts with more than 100 women. But how to explain his starring role in a 2017 exhibition at an art museum? The Kimbell wants us to imagine the decadent 18th-century world he traveled in, and has gathered some 200 artworks, costumes, and furnishings to illustrate it. Though visitors see a few images of his conquests, including a beautiful 1757 portrait of Parisian teenager Manon Balletti, seeing Casanova through the show’s lens “requires imagination.”

“That the concept of the exhibition is faintly ridiculous is not altogether bad,” said Rick Brettell in The Dallas Morning News. Instead of pointlessly pondering whether Canaletto’s St. Mark’s Basin or Tiepolo’s The Minuet better captures Venice’s grandeur, we can simply enjoy both views as welcome color in a great story. Then Casanova is off to the courts of France’s Louis XV, Russia’s Catherine the Great, and England’s King George III, and our immersion in that world of embroidered velvet jackets and jewel-embedded snuffboxes “overwhelms us in a way that can only be described as giddiness.” It really isn’t hard to imagine feats of seduction transpiring in such an atmosphere. If you prefer moreexplicit imagery, there’s also a small gallery that provides magnifying glasses for visitors over 21 interested in viewing miniature 18th-century drawings of the many sexual positions Casanova enjoyed. “The Kimbell primly warns us about it, but when in Venice, go for it.” ■