MINNEAPOLIS.- For the first time in its history, the oldest public art museum in the country is touring its best paintings, and they will be on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts this fall. MIA visitors will have the privilege of viewing sixty-one Old Master paintings from the collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut. A Passion for Paintings: Old Masters from the Wadsworth Atheneum comprises religious, mythical, and historical paintings, as well as portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. The works, spanning from 1490 to 1832, represent aesthetic high points from the Renaissance, Baroque, Rococo, and Romantic eras. The exhibition began touring in 2004, and is possible because of an ongoing expansion and renovation of the Atheneum.

Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art Established in 1842 by Daniel Wadsworth (a descendant of the family that left the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636 to found Hartford), the Atheneum opened its doors in 1844. Its original collection of eighty paintings included contemporary works by Americans, as well as European works ranging from authentic to supposed originals and didactic copies of European masterpieces. The collection grew into one of the country’s most renowned, in terms of its depth and sustained quality, according to Eric Zafran, the Atheneum’s curator of European painting and sculpture. He notes the “process of passionate procurement,” which began in 1927 with the appointment of the legendary A. Everett (“Chick”) Austin, Jr. as the museum’s director. Austin’s preference for works of the Baroque period (1600–1750), at a time when such works were out of favor, enabled the Atheneum to lay the solid foundation of Italian baroque paintings at prices that, on today’s market, would garner only a square inch of the painting in question. Charles Cunningham, who succeeded Austin in 1946, continued to build on this foundation over the next twenty years—adding some of the museum’s greatest treasures.

Exhibition Details One of the stars of the exhibition is Saint Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy (1594–5) by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Acquired by the Atheneum in 1943, it was the culmination of Austin’s career-long search for a Caravaggio, and was also the first authentic Caravaggio to be acquired by any American museum. The painting also set some precedents for the artist: his first multi-figure painting, his first religious composition, his first use of a landscape setting, and his first use of light in dual roles. The artist’s reinterpretation of the saint’s ecstatic moment as an internalized transformation was innovative as well.

Caravaggio’s influence on later painters is evidenced in several works on view, but is perhaps most apparent in Orazio Gentileschi’s stunning portrayal of the apocryphal tale, Judith and Her Maidservant with the Head of Holofernes (c. 1610–12). The strong light pulls the main figures from the inky darkness at the suspenseful moment when their escape from the enemy camp, with the severed head of the Assyrian commander, is uncertain.

The most arresting image for both its technical prowess and riveting psychological power is Salvator Rosa’s masterpiece of the Italian high baroque, Lucrezia as Poetry (c. 1640–1). The stark realism of the picture and hard, disdainful gaze of its subject converts an allegorical representation of poetry into a confrontation with a forbidding muse. Rosa’s interpretation of the muse, however, is quite apropos given his own illustrious reputation as a satirical poet whose scornful verses garnered him many enemies.

The contrast between dark baroque drama and the light-spirited rococo that succeeded it is epitomized in François Boucher’s The Egg Seller (c. 1734–5). The oval composition stems from the early phase of the artist’s career and makes apparent his nascent interest in images depicting love and seduction. What appears to be an innocent scene is actually laden with meaning. The egg, long a metaphor for female virtue, makes clear that the young woman’s honor is at risk.

Visitors to the exhibition will experience an unusual side of Francisco Goya, whose fame rests predominantly on works of a dark and sometimes psychologically disturbing nature. Gossiping Women (c. 1792–6) reveals that the artist also painted lighthearted rococo themes, such as the two young women stealing a moment to exchange the latest news in a pastoral setting. It is believed the work was executed for a wealthy merchant in whose house Goya convalesced during the winter of 1792–3 from the illness that would leave him deaf. The merchant’s collection, replete with works by Titian, Rubens, and Velazquez, profoundly influenced the development of Goya’s rococo style, as is apparent in the luminous color and bravura brushwork of the composition.

One of the pleasures of visiting an exhibition is the unexpected discovery of works that stand apart in terms of sheer originality. Such a work is the magnificent canvas by Joseph Wright of Derby, The Old Man and Death (1773), a hybrid of moralizing narrative and landscape. Wright was an avid proponent for raising the status of the landscape genre, and in this instance he uses it to create mood and enhance the meaning of the story. The macabre subject is rendered with a photographic reality that moves it into the realm of the surreal. The sharpness of detail in the light-washed landscape also reveals the artist’s interest in science and light effects. The overall result is akin to the hyper-lucidity of an unforgettable hallucination.

This exhibition is organized by the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Local media sponsorship is provided by Star Tribune.