Around 1785, when Domenico Tiepolo was nearing 60, he embarked on the largest-known New Testament cycle produced by a single artist. Working five or more years and probably without commission, Domenico produced 313 large, vertical, finished drawings in ink and wash on handmade paper. The narrative cycle — which is anchored by the Old Testament’s “The Sacrifice of Abraham,” then proceeds to the lives of Joachim and Anna (Mary’s parents), and moves through the acts of Peter and Paul — is a cinematic tour de force that thoroughly and inventively illustrates the Life of Christ.

An unprecedented grouping of nearly 60 drawings from the cycle has been brought together at the Frick Collection. The exhibition, titled “Domenico Tiepolo (1727–1804): A New Testament,” is curated by the director of the Indiana University Art Museum, Adelheid Gealt, and Susan Grace Galassi of the Frick. It is accompanied by a gorgeous and comprehensively researched catalogue raisonné of the cycle (Indiana University Press). I mention the catalog, which was co-authored by Ms. Gealt and a professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia, George Knox, because not only is it a substantial work of art history and a great accompaniment to the show, it also gives us the whole glorious story, filling in the 255 works missing from the exhibition.

The catalog is wonderful, but the Frick’s show is a little uneven. Although Domenico’s “New Testament Cycle” as a whole is masterful, not every one of its drawings is a masterpiece. Domenico lacks the rhythmic lightness, compositional grace, and over-the-top reach of his father, the great Venetian Rococo painter Giambattista Tiepolo. The “New Testament Cycle” is awkward and clumsy at times. Whole groups of figures will separate out from others, as if the drawing is made up of several compartmentalized spaces. Figures float above the ground or are disproportionate, and space collapses or is overdramatized, all for no apparent metaphorical reason. Domenico’s walls and floors can feel as if every stone was methodically accounted for, which gives some of the drawings an evenness that suggests they had been assembled rather than composed. It’s as if the artist was working so fast that he did not have time to weigh his forms down or to measure. Also, some of the drawings lack compositional focus, and peripheral or ancillary forms steal the show. Domenico’s signature lively trees, lovely, shorthand birds, and lanky dogs (some of which resemble that of Giacometti) can be more compelling than the Holy Family.

Relatively speaking, however, all of this is nit-picking. What Domenico lacks as an artist — he makes up for as an artist. His quivering, trembling line, his peculiar, sauntering, rubbery figures, his attention to, and choice of, bizarre details, and his grand yet plainspoken theatricality are all captivating. When Domenico draws dogs, birds, trees, and striped cloth, which zigzags and shudders and electrifies the space, he is on fire. His combination of experimentation, inventiveness, drive, and sheer do-or-die devotion to his subject — a must-see performance — carries the show. Yes, he is a drama queen who exaggerates, and he sings off-key occasionally; but he is fearless and exciting to watch, even when he can’t hit the high notes.

Moving through the exhibition, I was propelled as much by Domenico the experimental draftsman (he dribbles and drips and layers ink) as I was by Domenico the experimental storyteller (he will upstage Christ with a dog or a donkey). I kept thinking: I wonder what he’ll do with the theme of “such and such”?

Domenico’s approach to each story is tempered seemingly first by a specific mood, each of which is considerably different; yet he is always happy to set the events on steep steps leading up to classical architecture or on hills or precipices, and to have birds lazily drifting overhead and angels tumbling from the sky. If he can find any reason whatsoever to put a hungry dog in the foreground, he most undoubtedly will.

Domenico sets the tone of each story through darks, lights, and through his attack of the page. Few of the works in the show are subtle. Most are operatic and busy. Sometimes the action is obscure, and light varies considerably from drawing to drawing. Domenico’s light can be honey colored, emitting a warm and golden glow or it can be velvety dark, heavy, and ominous; watery, smoky, and miasmic; or speckled and sooty, as if the event were taking place during a firestorm.

Sometimes, Domenico is right on target. In “The Massacre of the Innocents,” a dreamy brown light softens the horror, and the whole ground plane is spinning, as if a dizzying, centrifugal force were throwing the mothers and the slain outward. In “The Lamentation,” the light is cloudy and reddish, like dying embers, and the dead Christ, a pearly white, seems to leap forward in space, pulling one of the distant crucifixions and his mother forward with him. In the foreground, a Roman soldier on horseback rears back and toward us, the viewers, yet drops into space behind Christ, as if he were miraculously forced out of the way.

In the weird and wonderful “A Miracle of Saint Agatha: The Sacred Heart,” flaming stars and hearts resembling fluttering fingers dance in a field of smoke above a group of praying figures. Both amazed and afraid, the figures gaze upward, wavering like flames and levitating slightly, as if they actually were heat rising.

Domenico’s Christ is always posed and hamming it up, and he changes considerably from scene to scene. The adult Christ — a fluttering, white robe over rubbery limbs, his oval halo grounding him from flight and locking him in place — moves determinably through the series like a general leading his troops. Arms usually fully outstretched, Christ makes grand, theatrical gestures, and he can be tender, humble, and attentive, or flamboyant and effete, or seemingly maniacal and possessed. Christ, the main character of the show, is the engine that drives the drawings. Looking at Domenico’s “A New Testament,” I could not help but think that Christ in this cycle is actually a stand-in for the artist. Domenico, a performer whose range is almost as various as that of his protagonist, can, in turn, be all of those things.

Until January 7 (1 E. 70th St., between Fifth and Madison avenues, 212-288-0700).