SHORT TAKES : Stained Glass and Reputations at Heart of Million-Dollar Suit

The volatile mixture of art and commerce has erupted in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit filed by a collector against a scholar and the venerable Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

The man in the middle is American artist John La Farge, a muralist and stained-glass maker who lived from 1835 to 1910. La Farge, whose works now sell in six figures, decorated the palaces of New York’s gilded age and public buildings nationwide. He invented the opalescent glass widely commercialized by Tiffany.

The vagaries of assigning a monetary value to his individual creative works are at the center of the $28-million lawsuit filed in federal court in New Jersey by Sean M. McNally, a former investment banker who devotes his time to studying and dealing in La Farge works. McNally claims he’s the victim of professional jealousy, while a lawyer for La Farge scholar James Yarnall of Washington charges that the lawsuit challenges the integrity of art scholarship.

According to McNally’s court papers, the seeds of the dispute were sown in February, 1988, when McNally appraised a La Farge piece called “Moon Window” for a private collector at $20,000. Yarnall told Met benefactor Richard M. Schwartz that “Moon Window” was worth $200,000, the lawsuit said. Schwartz bought the work for $165,000 a month later.

In April, its companion piece sold at auction for $14,200.

That sale showed Yarnall’s appraisal to be inaccurate and set him on his course to “denigrate and diminish” both McNally’s collection and his professional reputation, the lawsuit alleged.

According to the lawsuit, Yarnall also told Schwartz in the presence of Met officials that a McNally window was unimportant, badly restored and not worth the $150,000 Schwartz was ready to pay for it. That appraisal sank the deal.

The lawsuit, filed Nov. 28, has slander, libel and contract interference claims and seeks at least $28 million in punitive and other damages.