ART REVIEW : A Bridge to the Modern World : Art: LACMA’s ‘Treasures From the Fitzwilliam,’ taken from the museum at Cambridge University, illustrates the march of art through the centuries.

Titian, Rubens, Rembrandt, Hogarth, Delacroix, Degas--given the list of stellar names from the pantheon in Western art history, it might seem odd to choose Francois-Xavier Fabre as the artist to represent the highly engaging exhibition, “Treasures From the Fitzwilliam Museum: The Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation.”

But that’s just what its organizers did. Through the reproduction of a Fabre portrait on the covers of both the catalogue and the press kit, and with pride of place for the painting in the gallery installation, the show--which opened Thursday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (to Sept. 9)--surprisingly features a relatively obscure artist as its metaphoric poster boy.

The choice might be surprising, but it also turns out to be appropriate. The reason is that the Fitzwilliam, the first great university museum ever, has more on its mind than merely toting up celebrated names.

The museum was established in 1816 by Richard, seventh Viscount Fitzwilliam of Merrion, with a bequest to Cambridge University of his art collections and library, and a sum of money to care for both. (A sweet portrait of 19-year-old Richard, by the often eccentric Joseph Wright of Derby, hangs in the show.) The aim, according to the bequest, was to promote “the Increase of Learning and other great Objects of that Noble Foundation.” The selection at LACMA, which numbers more than 160 items, suggests the diversity and scope of that intent.

The earliest object is a delicate, incised drawing of a reindeer on a small, thin shard of limestone, dating from the Paleolithic period (about 12000 BC). The latest is also a drawing--a 1918 pencil study of an actress wearing a large hat, by Amadeo Modigliani.

In between are Asian, Middle Eastern and, mostly, European decorative arts, paintings, sculptures, coins, prints and many more drawings. Not everything is first-rate. The graceful Paleolithic reindeer may be regarded as among the finest examples of naturalistic art to have survived the ages, but the Modigliani is at best indifferent.

In fact, the celebrated names can’t always be counted on to deliver celebrated works. Antoine Watteau’s delicate chalk study of a man playing a flute falls apart in the crude rendering of the hands, while the Renoir painting of a street scene is, typically, a chromatic mess (the otherwise sensible catalogue wildly claims that it compares to “Luncheon of the Boating Party,” far and away Renoir’s finest painting). In the museum’s historical chain, the 19th-Century holdings constitute the weakest link, forming a perfunctory coda to the exhibition.

But individual excellence is not the only reason a museum--especially a university museum--assembles a collection. The Watteau drawing claims historical significance, serving as the model for figures in more than one painting by this important artist, while the Renoir is in part instructive simply because it dates from the same period as his great boating picture. As for the 19th-Century slump, it suggests the difficulty in making sense of contemporaneous, as opposed to historical, artistic events--a difficulty common to any number of museums.

Still, the gold far outweighs the dross in the galleries. The hard, jewel-like color of Bassano’s early mannerist “Journey to Calvary” (circa 1540) gets my wholly arbitrary vote for Best of Show, while the furiously flailing limbs of Titian’s monumental image of rape, “Tarquin and Lucretia” (1568-71), create a disturbing dramatic spectacle.

Elsewhere, Peter Paul Rubens’ small oil on copper, “The Death of Hippolytus” (circa 1611), is as startlingly fresh as if it had been painted last week. Carlo Dolci’s 17th-Century portrait of a contemplative scholar--a fitting subject for a museum at Cambridge--carries what is surely the most beautifully painted shirt collar ever: Like frosted glass, the translucent cloth creates a dazzling shadow play for the silver cloak tassel it conceals.

The five medieval manuscripts and the many small bronzes--especially an astonishing 2nd-Century BC figure of a drunken Hercules, which is believed to have been broken off the shoulder of a vessel--are almost uniformly fine. And for those whose sensibilities are easily offended, here’s a friendly warning: Avoid at all costs William Hogarth’s delightful pair of paintings, “Before” and “After.” They’re raucously engaging images of a courtly lad and lass, but the bracketed event in question would doubtless make Jesse Helms apoplectic.

The sensitively installed show is slightly marred by an annoying glare in the main gallery, which makes unobstructed viewing of the large Titian, Van Dyck, Guercino and Salvator Rosa difficult at best. (A makeshift space, carved from the well of the Ahmanson Building’s atrium, the room has no ceiling to support adequate lighting.) Still, “Treasures of the Fitzwilliam” demonstrates something pivotal about the foundations of the modern era, something its “poster boy” makes plain.

Francois-Xavier Fabre was a fashionable and successful painter of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A student of the great neo-classical master, Jacques-Louis David, he won the requisite prize for any aspiring French artist--the Premier Grand Prix de Rome--and promptly left for Italy. He meant to insert himself as the inevitable destination for the on-going march of history and civilization: Imperial Rome to Renaissance Italy to the neo-classical turn of the 19th Century.

Fabre’s aristocratic portrait of a gentleman, “Allen Smith Seated Above the Arno, Contemplating Florence” (1797) is about as straightforward a declaration of this path of ascent as could be imagined. The actual identity of the sitter has long been in dispute (recent speculation is that he was American, not British), but clearly this tourist was a man of means. The picture’s composition derives from a famous portrait of Goethe, with a notable difference: Smith’s head, formally posed as a refined profile, is reminiscent of an ancient cameo. He is seated on a crude block of stone decorated with Egyptian hieroglyphs, a ruined Corinthian capital at his feet and the Renaissance city Florence spread out before his steady gaze.

Dressed in period clothes and powdered wig, Smith is also wrapped in a tunic that approximates a Greek chiton or a Roman toga. The loping arches of a bridge that spans the Arno form a rhythmic procession leading gently to the graceful curve of the sitter’s hand--a sitter who has thus been deftly cast by Fabre as a living bridge to the classical past.

Although acquired by the Fitzwilliam only in this century, the painting’s 1797 date is roughly coincident with the university museum’s 1816 founding. The impulse that fueled one also fueled the other. It’s easy to see the appropriateness of Mr. Smith as “poster boy” for this illuminating exhibition.