The canon from the sidelines ============================ * Marcus Miller Promotional superlatives notwithstanding, the summer offering at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is no blockbuster. *Italian Old Masters from Raphael to Tiepolo: the Collection of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts* is a great relief to anyone who still clings to the idea that museums do more than entertain. Anyone looking for an easily digestible condensation of art-historical paradigms, or wanting to be temporarily dazzled out of the mundane, would have been disappointed by this show. On the other hand, as a first-hand look at this substantial collection of paintings, *Italian Old Masters* paid dividends. ![Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/167/3/285/F1.medium.gif) [Figure1](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/167/3/285/F1) Figure. **Bernardo Bellotto,** *c.* 1720. *The Piazza della Signoria in Florence.* Oil on canvas*,* 61 cm x 90 cm Photo by: Budapest Museum of Fine Arts ![Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/167/3/285/F2.medium.gif) [Figure2](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/167/3/285/F2) Figure. **Filippino Lippi,** *c.* 1480. *Madonna and Child with Saint Anthony of Padua and a Friar.* Tempera on panel, 57 cm x 41.5 cm Photo by: Budapest Museum of Fine Arts ![Figure3](http://www.cmaj.ca/https://www.cmaj.ca/content/cmaj/167/3/285/F3.medium.gif) [Figure3](http://www.cmaj.ca/content/167/3/285/F3) Figure. **Lorenzo Monaco,** *c.* 1420. *Painted Crucifix*. Tempera on panel, 146 cm x 84 cm Photo by: Budapest Museum of Fine Arts Forty-three paintings from Hungary's national museum were borrowed for this one-time show of minor masterpieces on view from April 24 to Aug 4. On its modest Web site, the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts boasts “one of the best ordered collections in Europe.” This means that acquisitions over the past two centuries have endowed it with a no-gaps survey of European (especially Italian) art from 1300 to 1800, on par with better-known collections in Dresden and Prague. Although most great European museums were established by nationalizing royal treasures, the heart of the Budapest Museum was purchased from the collections of Hungary's illustrious Esterházy family. Subsequent acquisitions from the church, nobility and the museum's first director, the savvy Károly Pulszky, reinforced the predilection for Italian art. Unfortunately, what is really a rare treat just didn't look very good, and it was hard to get past the dreary colour scheme, the flimsy and gratuitous display props and the overly spacious and insensitive installation of paintings. The exhibition designer can't be held responsible for all the unpleasantness, however. Walking into the first gallery the viewer beheld the earliest work in the show: a painted crucifix by Lorenzo Monaco (*c.* 1420). Typically Gothic, Don Lorenzo was not so concerned with the natural proportions of the body (note the small head) as he was with pattern and decoration. “Cut-outs” like this were commonly hung from the ceiling above the altar, where sculptures in the round might be placed. Here we find it mounted on a light-maroon toned fabric panel, sealed in an acrylic box and hung like a painting. Sadly, this is probably how the gallery received the work. Not only does the colour of the fabric backing do an injustice to the gold tones of the painting (cf. the catalogue reproduction of this piece pictured against a much darker teal background), but an opportunity was missed, by disregarding its original, sculptural installation. Another missed opportunity: two square panels by Antonio de Sacchi depicting Saint Mark and Saint Luke were striking for their extreme cropping and unusual perspective. They looked like postmodern pastiches of renaissance virtuosity. Not until I read the fine print did I realize that these panels were commissioned for a ceiling. Here, the Modern technique of hanging paintings in a line at eye-level misleads. The heterogeneity of display and installation was lost, and one was given no sense that painting once played only a partial role in the production of an integrated artistic effect. Reflecting the strength of the lending institution's collection, the exhibition was laid out in a strict chronology, the six galleries devoted to a progression of art-historical periods. The story goes like this: Forget the “Dark Ages,” the Gothic era is a period of rapidly expanding trade and intellectual activity. Lorenzo's worldly attention to decorative detail in his “cut-out” is a sign of cosmopolitan, secular sophistication. The Church gets too comfortable and science is born. Renaissance artists take to the field in a frenzy of disinterested observation. Bodies are dissected, vanishing points and horizon lines are drawn, and proportional figures are integrated into geometric space. In his beautiful, but stylistically regressive* Madonna and Child with Saint Anthony of Padua and a Friar* (*c.*1480), Filippino Lippi gets each figure right, but the awesome discrepancies in scale hearken to a world before humanism. After all the rules have been figured out, the Mannerists break them. Renaissance detachment and order give way to veiled eroticism, distortions and asymmetry. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) puts the brakes on all that, and Baroque emerges. Annibale Carracci and his associates establish the Academy of Progressives in Bologna and rededicate their practices to objective scrutiny, emulating Renaissance masters and the study of classical models. Rococo is the inevitable antidote, and, in this exhibit, it emerges as a surprisingly rich period in works as diverse as Tiepolo's masterful fantasy, *The Virgin with Six Saints* (1755–56), and Bellotto's two *vedute* (views), both *circa* 1742, which might be regarded as monuments to the everyday. The indispensable value of experiencing these works in the flesh, and the pay-off for devoting oneself to this comprehensive display of minor masterpieces becomes evident as one begins to notice the exceptions to the rules (always more evident in the margins), and how certain powerful works don't seem to fit. Nevertheless the reductive frames of art history are useful as provisional models, and this exhibit provided a splendid, off-centre tour through the canon. **Marcus Miller** Montreal, Que.