Days of Drowning

Amid the turmoil of war and destruction in eighteenth-century Europe, three artists were trying to make sense of rapid change, of ruination: Tiepolo, Piranesi and - particularly - Goya. They are joined, from the margins, by a strange figure - a refugee, an observer, an idiot savant, a Pulcinella, a Fool or Trickster. Nell is another outsider, there on the edge; another loner or non-conformist, whose mutability seems to ensure his survival in a shifting world.

A multi-voiced hybrid, Days of D...