For lovers of old master paintings, "Ideal(Dis-)Placements: Old Masters at the Pulitzer" should be the highlight of the exhibition season, and considering that it will continue through June, it will be the proverbial gift that keeps on giving.

During that time, it will be just about the only game in town. The St. Louis Art Museum, the only local institution with a significant collection of European art made before 1800, has reduced its presentation to just two galleries.

Some of those pictures are at the Pulitzer, among them a large architectural landscape by Hubert Robert, a dramatic crucifixion by Giambattista Tiepolo and a lurid mythological work by Joachim Wtewael.

The familiar local paintings have been made fresh, however, by their installation with works from the Harvard Art Museum.

In almost every case, the Harvard and St. Louis pictures are enhanced by each other.

Take 17th- and 18th-century Neapolitan painting, a seriously underrated school of baroque and rococo art. In the Pulitzer's long, narrow Main Gallery, two paintings by Corrado Giaquinto, a Naples-trained painter who later worked in Rome and Madrid, one owned by Harvard, one by St. Louis, are hung across from each other. Giaquinto has virtually no name recognition today, but seeing the two suavely painted works, both on religious themes, makes you wonder why.

And nearby in one of two large "medallions," St. Louis' pair of paintings on the theme of Judith and Holofernes by Luca Giordano, the leading Neapolitan painter of the previous generation, provides a quick study in influence.

The Harvard paintings are the highlight of the show.

Perhaps the greatest painting in the show is Harvard's Saint Jerome by Jusepe de Ribera, a Spanish artist who worked in Naples. The aged saint stands against a dark chocolate brown ground, his still inwardness a sign of saintliness. The painting demonstrates clearly 17th-century painters' ability to make raw material into a semblance of living and breathing flesh.

This is the kind of unvarnished naturalism that 19th-century painters like Edouard Manet transformed in their own work into modernism. The small still life of books in the painting's lower left could be by the Frenchman.

The Entrance Gallery features three more Neapolitan paintings from Harvard, by Battistello Caracciolo, Andrea Vaccaro and Paolo Finoglia. Each exhibits the unique blend of sensuality and spirituality that was the trademark of Neapolitan style.

In Caracciolo's dramatic St. Sebastian, the Christian martyr is no pretty wimp, as he is often portrayed. His big fleshy body is that of a Roman soldier willing to die for his faith. But his nudity is nearly erotic. Is the saint dying from his wounds or is he expiring from sensual ecstasy?

After his residency in the city, early 17th-century Neapolitan painters adopted Caravaggio's radical use of chiaroscuro — the contrast of dark and light tones — that created believable three-dimensional space and volume on the canvas's flat surface. Sebastian's white body emerges with full human physicality from the canvas's dark ground.

These are perfect paintings to hang in the Pulitzer's dark Entrance Gallery, where modern works painted for brightly lighted spaces have not fared so well.

In addition to being a showcase of great traditional paintings and drawings, the exhibition is an experiment in installation technique and style.

I have to admit that my hackles rose when I first heard that the Pulitzer was going to use natural light throughout the installation. I have spent too many frustrated hours in museums here and abroad jockeying for the right position to see a painting that is either a mass of glare or an impenetrable puddle of murk.

But with a few exceptions, the Pulitzer experiment in natural lighting has won me over. Of course, the day I visited, it was bright and sunny, and the long Main Gallery was bathed in light that gently caressed the canvas surfaces. We'll have to see how the same gallery fares on a gray day in January. (Pulitzer director Matthias Waschek says that the best time to experience the light is from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.)

Devoted to Italian gold-ground painting, the Cube Gallery gets failing grades from me. The museum's Madonna and Child by Bartolomeo Vivarini, which glints on the wall opposite the gallery's entry, suggests what the Pulitzer was trying for, but its success is undercut by other works' invisibility.

Lighting is not an issue with the Drawing Cabinet installed in the Lower Gallery.

This might be the best survey of old master drawings ever seen in St. Louis. With great and/or fascinating works by Rubens, Michelangelo, Pontormo, Guido Reni, Agostino Caracci and Veronese, it is an experience not to be missed.

dbonetti@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8351