A MOMENT OF TENDERNESS

LIKE its wealthy Italian sisters across the mountains, the city of Nice in the 15th and 16th centuries was a place where great fortunes were piled up in the midst of misery. Moneylenders flourished, and when the long-suffering poor finally rose against their masters in 1437, they were brutally put down by execution and banishment. But the rich man's ways were in a sense a boon to posterity; there was no easier way for him to purge his sins or ease his conscience than by commissioning a rich altarpiece for some local chapel.

This summer, visitors to Nice have been learning just how great an art center the city was in those days (see color). Jacques Thirion, director of the city's museums, scoured the chapels, museums and private collections of Western Europe for works done by the French and Italian primitive painters of Nice and the surrounding regions. The search was not easy. Some villages balked at surrendering the one treasure that for generations had been the pride of their lives, others in the mountains worried about how their treasures would survive the rough roads. To borrow an altarpiece done by Nice's Louis Brea for Jean Grimaldi in 1500, Thirion had to get permission from both the Bishop of Monaco and the present Grimaldi, Prince Rainier. To get any work in France meant soliciting first the government in Paris, then the local bishop, priest and mayor. Fortunately, the exhibition coincided with the 100th anniversary of Nice's return to France from Sardinia. "Had it not been for this patriotic theme," says Thirion, "I probably could not have persuaded a score of alpine villages to part with their masterpieces."

The names of some of the artists shown have been lost to history, and little more than a name is known about others. The artists did not paint portraits or landscapes, but devoted themselves exclusively to decorating the chapels that dotted the countryside. It was hard, though profitable, work. An altarpiece done in Nice would have to be carted up the mountains by donkey, panel by panel. But many of the painters wandered to wherever their commissions took them, and so their work became a graceful blend of French and Italian styles. Nice's Louis Brea, who founded a "dynasty" of painters, is perhaps the most famous name in the show, but no work surpasses the splendor of Jean Miralhet's Virgin of Misericordia.

Miralhet was born in Montpellier around 1394, died in Nice some 60 years later. He had studios in both Marseille and Nice, and Louis Brea is known to have worked with him. Though the Virgin of Misericordia, which hangs in the Chapel of the Black Penitents in Nice, is Miralhet's only known work, French experts still think it is evidence enough to rank him as one of the finest artists of his time. The time was one that lived in dread of the plague, and Miralhet's Virgin is shown tenderly shielding the city's population with her cloak. For once, there were no rich and no poor in Nice: the compassion of the Virgin fell upon all men alike.

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