Any way to get complete diff up to a tag?

If I use

$ git diff v1.7.1..

I get a diff for everything that has happened after the v1.7.1 release (up to HEAD). Is there a way to do the opposite, i.e., get everything (including the initial commit) up to and including v1.7.1? I first tried

$ git diff ..v1.7.1

but it gave me the reverse of the above, which I later found out was due to it being the same as

$ git diff HEAD..v1.7.1

which of course does not yield the result I want. 

If I use

$ git diff $(git rev-list --reverse v1.7.1 |head -1)..v1.7.1

I almost get what I want, but the initial commit is still missing. Is there any way to get that initial commit included in the diff?

Basically, what I think I am asking for is a way to specify the empty parent of the initial commit, i.e., where v1.7.1~1000000 would end up. I can see this being useful in at least one other case as well, namely when doing an interactive rebase to allow the initial commit to be rebased (something I have wanted to do a couple of times...)

//Peter