CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA.- The Italians exhibition does contain some great paintings, writes Bruce James. “I believe there are three indisputably great paintings in The Italians: Three Centuries Of Italian Art at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. They are Rosso's Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro, Caravaggio's Narcissus and Lotto's Annunciation of the Virgin, probably in that order. They are works that would distinguish any exhibition, anywhere, anytime. I first saw the Rosso in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence in 1977, the Caravaggio in The Age of Caravaggio project at the Metropolitan Museum in New York in 1985 and the Lotto in Lorenzo Lotto at the National Gallery of Art in Washington in 1999. They are images I admired as lackluster book-plates in adolescence, and have come to adore as luminous realities in adulthood. Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro bears all the hallmarks of a movement for which many writers and historians of my generation have an abiding passion: Mannerism. The Mannerist phenomenon marks the close of the harmonious enterprise of the High Renaissance, as Italian culture entered a period of discord and unease - not unlike the one it is experiencing now under Silvio Berlusconi, a prime minister as prepared to play politics with his artistic patrimony as any Medici. Esoteric in subject matter, piquant in color, claustrophobic in design and, above all, intriguing in psychological address, Rosso's painting demands deep emotional responses from viewers. Indeed, all three works, the Rosso, the Caravaggio and the Lotto, carry a psychological payload that, without being modern, speaks to modernity”.