Two years ago, an important, long-forgotten 19th-century painting was discovered in the janitor's closet of Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Dassel, Minn. Last week, the church gave the painting to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, where it is now on view permanently. Dirt, mold and yellowing varnish obscured the image when it arrived at the museum, but the painting proved to be in near-perfect condition after cleaning. Patrick Noon, the museum's painting curator, used old documents and exhibition records to speculate about how it got from Paris to Boston and then to Dassel, where a minister's widow gave it to the church in 1931.

THE PAINTING

One of the most famous images of its day, "Christus Consolator" was painted in 1851 by Ary Scheffer, a Dutch-born, French-trained artist. A larger version of the picture is in the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam because Vincent van Gogh, a pious Christian, admired the image and owned an engraving of it.

THE INSPIRATION

Luke 4: 18: "I have come to heal those who are broken-hearted and to announce to the prisoners their deliverance; to liberate those who are crushed by their chains." The verse is inscribed on the frame of the Amsterdam painting.

THE CHARACTERS

• Christ sits on a sturdy-looking cloud, and comforts oppressed people from the past and present.

On the left:

• A woman weeps over her dead child.

• Torquato Tasso, the Italian Renaissance poet wearing a laurel wreath, symbolizes the fusion of art and politics; his epic poem "Jerusalem Delivered" tells of Christian efforts to liberate Jerusalem from Muslim rule.

• Three women depict three stages of life; the oldest is a portrait of Scheffer's mother.

• A homeless vagabond, a drowned man (outstretched arm) and a suicide (knife in hand) stand for those needing comfort and salvation.

On the right:

• Mary Magdalene, a repentant sinner, bends over Christ's left arm.

• A dying soldier reaches toward Christ, who holds broken shackles signifying the man's release from sin and mortal pain.

• A black slave, in chains, pleads for freedom. The slave was often omitted from American engravings of the paintings used in church literature in the South. That enraged the Quaker poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier, who wrote a diatribe condemning the omission.

• A Polish freedom fighter, a medieval serf and a Greek warrior represent people suffering political and economic exploitation.

Mary Abbe • 612-673-4431