Looting Dispute Artfully Resolved

Riveting stories have been emerging in the post-Cold War era about thousands of works of art looted in Europe during World War II. The stories raise tangled questions about how conflicting claims of rightful ownership can be ethically and morally resolved, and happy conclusions have so far been scarce. That’s one reason a new exhibition at Connecticut’s venerable Wadsworth Atheneum is both welcome and attracting considerable attention.

The show, “Caravaggio and His Italian Followers: From the Collections of the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Roma,” represents the resolution of a 30-year dispute over the rightful ownership of a Florentine Mannerist painting, stolen by Russian soldiers from the Italian Embassy in Berlin during the chaos of the war’s final days. The Wadsworth, which innocently acquired Jacopo Zucchi’s “The Bath of Bathsheba” (circa 1570) from a Parisian dealer in 1965, agreed to return it to the Italian government; as compensation for Hartford’s loss, Italy offered an impressive loan of Baroque paintings from Rome’s Barberini and Corsini palaces. The Wadsworth then amplified the loan with a judicious selection of paintings from American collections, including its own.

The show, which will not travel, is also noteworthy for its subject. Any opportunity to see multiple examples of the work of Michelangelo Merisi (1571-1610), who was called Caravaggio after the small town near Milan where he was born, should always be seized without hesitation. Caravaggio is one among that small handful of painters about whom it can be said that, after him, art was not the same again.

Part of the excitement of the Wadsworth show is the clarity with which you can see so many other gifted artists of the early 17th century--Carlo Saraceni, Simon Vouet, Jusepe de Ribera, Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter, Artemisia, and more--being stunned by Caravaggio’s precedent. Their responses vary: galvanized, traumatized, liberated, humbled.

Five paintings by Caravaggio are in the show--two from Rome, one each from museums in Fort Worth and Kansas City, Mo., and, finally, the Wadsworth’s own electrifying picture, “The Ecstasy of St. Francis.” This last painting starts with the standard composition of a pieta, then spins it into an exquisite moment fusing spiritual refinement with an erotic charge.

St. Francis reclines on the grass in a peaceful swoon, as his right thumb and index finger graze the open stigma that marks his chest. His upper torso is gently cradled in the pale white arms of an angel, portrayed as a serenely beautiful young boy.

Whether spiritual or carnal, love for Caravaggio is never a remote, imaginary ideal; instead, it’s always characterized as a deeply sensuous encounter with the material stuff of the world--such as Francis’ fingers grazing the wound. Caravaggio’s genius as an artist lies in driving the point home by providing the audience with a similarly delirious, equally sensorial encounter with the material stuff of his own art.

“The Ecstasy of St. Francis” was the first Caravaggio acquired by an American museum. The Wadsworth bought it in 1943, after discovering that a 1930 acquisition--a small portrait--thought to be by him was in fact the work of a later, still unattributed French artist. In solving the problem of the looted Zucchi, the museum’s current director, Peter C. Sutton, was smart to build on the Wadsworth’s own distinguished artistic legacy.

The St. Francis picture is emblematic of the museum’s small but choice collection of Italian Baroque paintings, begun by the Wadsworth’s legendary director, A. Everett “Chick” Austin Jr., at a time when such work was not held in the highest favor. (The show’s catalog includes a wonderfully informative essay on how that collection grew, especially in the 1930s and 1940s.) “Caravaggio and His Italian Followers” mixes 10 of the museum’s own paintings with the 29 lent from Rome, thus deepening the resonance of the permanent collection for audiences in Hartford.

The show is divided into three very full galleries. The small central room houses the five Caravaggios, plus three other closely related paintings. A large gallery to the left focuses on his Roman and Venetian followers, with especially fine examples by Saraceni, Gentileschi, Guercino and others. The large gallery to the right concentrates mostly on his impact in the area around Naples--notably on Spanish emigre Ribera--since, at the end of his life, the hot-tempered Caravaggio was on the lam in southern Italy, after impetuously murdering an opponent in a ballgame.

While not as sprawlingly comprehensive as the great 1985 exhibition in New York, “The Age of Caravaggio,” the Hartford show is still a rich and provocative survey of a single artist and his enormous influence. Call it a crash course in Caravaggio and his consequences.

It also boasts some scholarly coups. One is the juxtaposition of two pictures of St. John the Baptist--one from the Corsini and never before shown in America, the other brought from the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City--which haven’t been seen together since they left the artist’s studio in about 1604.

Caravaggio’s earthy naturalism is on vivid display in both examples. The saint, usually portrayed as stoical or haggard, is instead shown here as a sullen young street kid. He’s St. John the Slacker.

The irreverent bent to these frank, unidealized, highly theatrical depictions of a deeply religious subject finds resonance throughout other works in the show. Take Saraceni’s marvelous picture of an otherwise ordinary family fracas, in which the Virgin Mary gently scolds a rambunctious baby Jesus, who is tugging insistently on Grandma’s robe. Struggling to get free, St. Anne clutches the wing of a flapping dove as if it were a lowly chicken--surely a first in the history of symbolic depictions of the Holy Ghost!

Another coup is the reattribution of a terrific picture of a pretty, flirtatious fortuneteller reading the open palm of a rapt country artisan, while her elderly partner neatly picks the rube’s pocket from behind. This classic image, which mingles worldly deceit with artistic trickery, is told in slightly different terms in Caravaggio’s magnificent “The Cardsharps,” lent by Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum and hanging nearby; once, “The Fortune Teller” too was thought to have been painted by Caravaggio.

Since the 1960s it has been firmly attributed to Bartolommeo Manfredi, one of the master’s most ardent followers. Now, in preparation for the current exhibition, a newly discovered inscription on the back has revealed that the picture was in fact painted in 1617 by the Frenchman Simon Vouet, making it the first documented work he completed during his sojourn to Rome. Thus does the breadth of Caravaggio’s decisive impact grow.

One big disappointment for the show was the Barberini’s refusal to lend its other Caravaggio, a murderously satisfying picture of a determined Judith calmly hacking off the head of her would-be rapist, the Babylonian general Holofernes, using his own terrible swift sword. You’ll have to settle instead for the fine after-the-fact version of the story by Orazio Gentileschi, in which Judith and her maid, having done the deed, hurriedly stuff Holofernes’ head into a wicker basket before the general’s soldiers stumble on the bloody scene.

Or, console yourself with Caravaggio’s dark, haunting picture of Narcissus kneeling to gaze longingly at his murky reflection in a pool. The painter depicts him with one hand dipping slowly into the water; it’s another sensuous encounter with the material truth of an otherwise elusive image, which also forecasts the imminent drowning of the beautiful youth. That some scholars believe Narcissus might in fact be a symbolic self-portrait only adds to the picture’s poignant resonance.

“Caravaggio and His Italian Followers” is an especially satisfying resolution to one instance of the problem of looted art. Not only has insightful advantage been taken of the predicament between the Wadsworth Atheneum and the government of Italy, but other museums might also draw two important lessons from its example.

First, every situation is unique. And second, an answer might be found by regarding the dilemma not merely as a headache, but as a decisive opportunity.

* Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main St., Hartford, Conn., (860) 278-2670, through July 26. Closed Mondays.