The critic, the minister and the art show: How a bad review led to a diplomatic row

There is blood and gore aplenty in the post-Renaissance Italian paintings that adorn the walls of the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. And if one particular art critic had dared to show his face in the building yesterday, there would have been blood on the carpet as well.

Yesterday was supposed to be a proud moment for gallery directors, who unveiled a blockbuster exhibition hailed as the greatest collection of Old Masters ever seen outside Italy. Instead, they spent the day frantically staving off a diplomatic incident following a blistering attack by the critic, Benjamin Genocchio.

In a front-page review in The Australian newspaper, Mr Genocchio described the show – The Italians: Three Centuries of Italian Art – as "a resoundingly average exhibition of minor pictures by second and third division artists".

Mr Genocchio, himself an Italian citizen, opined that even works by the likes of Michelangelo were "tiny drawings rather than lush oils". He added, for good measure, that many of the paintings – including the centrepiece of the exhibition, Caravaggio's Narcissus – had been poorly restored.

Bad reviews are as common as air-kissing in the art world, but this one provoked an extraordinary reaction. Italy's Under-Secretary of State for Culture and Art, Vittorio Sgarbi, who had flown to Canberra for the opening of the show, called a joint press conference with the director of the National Gallery, Brian Kennedy, to denounce the vile critic.

Trembling with indignation, Mr Sgarbi swore that the Italian government would sue The Australian for besmirching its honour. He declared that it would seek defamation damages from the newspaper's owners, Rupert Murdoch's publishing empire, in the order of $50m to 100m (£19m to £37m).

The interpreter could barely keep pace as Mr Sgarbi, a flamboyant figure, railed against his compatriot in Italian. "Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but they are not entitled to lie," he said. "To say these works are of a second level or worse is absolutely incredible. It is unacceptable.

"It would be like saying Buster Keaton is not a great actor. It is, of itself, evidently false. The journalist needs to go back to school – I would say primary school."

Mr Sgarbi, a television celebrity and art historian with a column in a newspaper owned by the Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, knows what he is talking about. He also enjoys a scrap. Last week, Italy abruptly withdrew from the Paris Book Fair, where it was guest of honour, after Mr Sgarbi shouted "Nazis, Fascists, Communists!" at a group of anti-Berlusconi intellectuals who were jostling the Italian delegation.

Many in the Australian art world were perplexed yesterday by the hand grenade lobbed by Mr Genocchio, a highly respected critic and academic who has written several books.

The exhibition features 107 works by 16th, 17th and 18th-century artists including Titian, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, Tiepolo and Canaletto. Breathlessly awaited in Australia, which rarely gets the chance to host European shows of that calibre, it will stay in Canberra until June and then move to Melbourne.

Some art experts in Australia theorised about a sub-plot, noting that Mr Kennedy's conservative stewardship of the nation's flagship gallery had met with disapproval from numerous critics, including Mr Genocchio.

Mr Kennedy, a dour Irishman, was widely criticised for cancelling the controversial British exhibition, Sensation, which included a painting of the Virgin Mary spattered with cow dung and a wall-sized image of the Moors murderess, Myra Hindley. Yesterday, infuriated that Mr Genocchio had spoilt his launch, Mr Kennedy lambasted the review as "second-rate criticism, sloppy journalism and an appalling insult".

Other observers were intrigued by the way that Mr Sgarbi – who has tried to radically overhaul the Venice Film Festival – interpreted the article as a personal attack by Mr Murdoch. "I have to stress that the Italian government is not able to accept this approach, and we will seek redress from the Murdoch press," he said.

Mr Murdoch and Mr Berlusconi, rival media magnates, are currently jostling for a piece of Germany's ailing Kirsh television group.

The editor of The Australian, Michael Stutchbury, said in a statement yesterday that he stood by the review.

And Mr Genocchio refused to recant. "If anything, I was kind on the exhibition," he said. "This is not the greatest exhibition of Italian Masters to tour Australia, and really it's not a great exhibition." Mr Genocchio – who is one-half of a Sydney power art couple, his wife being an acclaimed Asian art curator – was scathing about the quality of restoration in the works. Many, he said, had been cleaned and repainted, destroying much of their original colour and brushwork.

Commenting on Narcissus, he said: "The shading on the right hand of the figure is wrong, while the hair appears to me to have been repainted, rather badly."

His criticism was rejected by other experts. Professor Jaynie Anderson, head of the School of Fine Arts at Melbourne University, said she was "quivering with anger" after reading the article. Professor Nicola Spinosa, superintendent of art and culture in Naples, said Mr Gennochio should spend two years studying in Italy. "After that, perhaps he should write his thesis," she added, witheringly.

Patrick Matthieson, a British art dealer who organised the loan of two paintings for the show, said he was surprised at the quality and number of works on display. "This exhibition would have been inconceivable 10 years ago," he said. "It is a quite extraordinary assembly of major masterpieces." Mr Matthieson said exhibitions of Italian masterpieces that had recently toured world capitals had comprised a few key works with "lots of stuffing". "This time there is no stuffing," he said.

Mr Sgarbi was only too happy to agree. It had only been possible to take the collection out of Italy because the rigid state bureaucracy that jealously guarded the nation's cultural heritage had been relaxed, he said.

Mr Sgarbi was vague when pressed about a possible course of legal action against the newspaper and became cross when journalists sniggered at the damages figure. "This is not a laughable matter," he said, adding: "Any damages eventually paid will go to a good cause, namely the restoration of art."

If a case ever came to court, which seems highly unlikely, it would be a fascinating test of the freedom of artistic criticism. It was Mark Twain who described the job of critic as "the most degraded of all trades". The Italian government, presumably, would not disagree.