"The artistic and personal world of 16th-century Venice is beautifully evoked in Wright's kaleidoscopic novella... Wright's Tintoretto is a wonderfully convincing fictional creation, an inspired combination of brilliance and a contemplative kind of pessimism...particularly Venetian mordant humor filters throughout Wright's dialogue-rich book... Wright also does a first-rate job succinctly painting the tense international background in which Venice is threatened both by the Habsburgs in the north and the Ottomans in the east. The whole thing is fast-paced and entirely satisfying. Recommended." - Historical Novel Society.

When a telescope arrives in Venice from the East, Jacopo Robusti, better known as the painter Tintoretto, is asked to examine and replicate it. In the winter of 1571 Cyprus has fallen. The Habsburgs press on the Venetian State from the north. War with the Ottoman Empire is coming to the seas.