Mantegna painting to appear at Italy's Mantua show

MILAN, Aug 26 (Reuters) Italy's government has backtracked to overrule a Milan gallery and agreed to loan Andrea Mantegna's influential painting, the ''Dead Christ,'' to nearby Mantua for an exhibition marking the 500th anniversary of the artist's death.

''I have given a favourable view, after an accurate on-the-spot technical investigation,'' Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said, according to Italian media reports.

Mantegna was one of the foremost northern Italian painters of the 15th century and was a master of the techniques of foreshortening and perspective.

The painting, found in Mantegna's studio after he died in 1506, depicts the body of Christ laid out on a slab from the perspective of a mourner at his feet -- one of the first such treatments of this subject.

The Brera art gallery in Milan had said the ''Dead Christ'', which is in tempera on canvas, was too delicate to be moved for the exhibition in the town of Mantua, where Mantegna worked for the Gonzaga family from 1460 until his death (www.andreamantegna2006.it).

Rutelli had backed Brera's decision last week, despite calls from Vittorio Sgarbi, chairman of the exhibition committee and a culture undersecretary in the former centre-right government, to intervene.

Sgarbi had accused the Brera gallery of lying about the painting's condition.

REUTERS DKA VV1714