Historians tend to dwell on the theatricality of Tiepolo's art and one can see why when analyzing a painting such as this. Indeed, a golden thread runs from Byzantine art via Bellini, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese to Tiepolo; and from Tiepolo to Fragonard.

Professor Don Lamb is a revered art historian at the height of his powers, consumed by the book he is writing about the skies of the Venetian master Tiepolo. I kept making work in a private and informal way, and one idea I had but never realised was to collage together a whole load of pieces of blue from reproductions of Tiepolo paintings to make a single variegated panel—something that happens in the book.The writing, when talking about Art History, Cahill’s area of expertise, is convincing, even beautiful at times. I’d guessed what was happening about halfway through this clever, neatly constructed tragicomedy but it still had me gripped, wondering when the penny would drop for Don. In his writing about physicality and bodies combining, however, he beautifully captures disorientation, tenderness and heat without tipping into excess. Two putti draw back the gilded curtains as if opening a play or an opera with the resulting negative space serving as a proscenium through which to view the nuptials of the Emperor.

The plot: Professor Don Lamb is an art historian at Peterhouse, Cambridge’s oldest and weirdest college.

This is in fact one of those novels where, despite some really strong writing, I felt like the author let the pace slow down a bit too much and often in favour of some really heavy descriptions of places, artists and works of art. He tries not to look at it, but his rooms face out onto the Court; even through closed curtains he can see its lights mocking him.

The professor is fusty beyond his years: he sees himself as a noble defender of the classical tradition, a crusader against those academics who concern themselves with the ‘fashionable irrelevances’ of ‘society, politics or psychology’ rather than ‘the fundamental things: proportion, light, balance’. The novel is set in the early 1990s, not long after it started admitting women undergraduates (a decision which the late Professor Scruton said “gratuitously destroyed” the institution, and that’s all you really need to know about Peterhouse and, indeed, Professor Scruton). The early chapters can feel a little too expositional as Cahill works hard to concretely establish the details of Don’s milieu in Cambridge, his past and his prickly sensibility. Bright in color and graceful of touch, his art is associated with the pleasure of looking though his work is also recognized for a spacious quality that allows the spectator to bring their own ideas to his wonderfully painted fantasies. Later on, when we meet him, he is going out into the world to crash into a sort of mid-life-latent-adolescent crisis that he nevertheless embraces with poise, shored up by his understanding of classical art and its history.

It's a measure of Cahill's sleight of hand that he manages to inject his plot with such page-turning momentum. His departure from academia was not entirely by choice but at the times when it seems that someone is pulling the strings that guide him through his new life, there is doubt caused by some event or other. As someone just graduating from a degree in art history and beginning my forays into the world of art and academia in London, I found it particularly entertaining as I could recognise so much within the people, places and quarrelling relationships that Cahill captures. I'm going to be lazy and just refer those interested to the incisive Guardian review below, but let me just end by saying this is one of the most beautifully bound volumes I've seen in recent years - not only the gorgeous gold embossed cover, but also full color endpapers of one of the titular artist's masterpieces.