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Art: Caravaggio, on loan

Blockbuster shows of museum art enthrall — and exhaust. Yes, it’s astonishing to see the treasures of Tutankhamun, the Picasso retrospective, Matisse beside Picasso, Calder’s circus.

But there’s a deep pleasure in being drawn to a museum to see a single work, on loan, set among its peers. There you’ll find no headsets, no clots of viewers; just people who love art and its tentacles.

Caravaggio’s “The Supper at Emmaus” (1601) hangs in Gallery 211 at the Art Institute of Chicago, grouped with contemporaries and followers, from Baglione and Manfredi to Velazquez and Rembrandt. (On loan from the National Gallery of London, through January 31.)

This Caravaggio, a huge canvas, still shocks more than four centuries after its creation. Light and shadow, perspective, a calm center anchoring the taught energy at its edges: this old works feels brash, fresh, explosive.

Truly, it astonishes, and the work that came after Caravaggio (1471-1610) clearly shows his influence.

The painting tells the story of Christ’s appearance after his Resurrection. Four figures group at a table laid with fruit, bread, wine, a roast bird. Two, his disciples, recognize Christ, and seem on the verge of leaping up or out of the frame.

This is a masterpiece of contained energy. Little wonder that Caravaggio’s work is considered a precursor to photography and cinema.

In the same gallery, and in adjoining ones (208 and 209), Caravaggio’s methods can be seen in the composition, light and shadow, and physicality of Manfredi’s “Cupid Chastised” (c. 1605). Too, we find Caravaggio’s light and shadow in a quiet domestic scene, Velazquez’s “Kitchen Servant” (c. 1618 ) and Rembrandt’s portrait, “Old Man with a Gold Chain” (1631).

Another uncluttered show at the Art Institute is a tribute to photographer Irving Penn, who died earlier this year. It’s in Gallery 3, a narrow space that in this exhibit holds a dozen photographs and a glass case display of Penn’s contact sheet binders and notebooks. Prints of workers, freaks, cropped nudes, a cigarette butt. Magnificent. (Through December 13.)

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