Blue ribbon for the curator, too

Nearly 30 couriers will arrive to take a total of 35 paintings from the blockbuster exhibition “Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese: Rivals in Renaissance Venice’’ to the Louvre in Paris, the show’s second and final destination. Some of the paintings are so valuable they will travel separately (no one wants to lose a dozen Titians if, heaven forbid, a plane should go down off the coast of Ireland).

Since this remarkable exhibit went up, nobody has spent more time in the galleries than Frederick Ilchman, the curator. A tall, fast-talking man with blond hair who combines ingenuous enthusiasm with a disarming air of boyish mischief, he’s conducted 101 tours of the exhibition and presented 37 slide lectures about it at the MFA and elsewhere.

“I had the pleasure of giving tours to not one but two former prime ministers of Italy,’’ he notes, “not to mention Carlos Slim, the Mexican billionaire, who had a remarkable facility for dates and numbers.’’

Ilchman, a graduate of Princeton and Columbia who spent five years living in Venice before coming to the MFA in 2001, has also given tours to art students, a group of theology professors (who “really knew their religious iconography’’), and a group of physicists from the Center for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University. (They were interested in employing models of competition and collaboration for scientific research.)

At the age of 42 - young in the museum world - Ilchman has pulled off a show that not only had critics and the public gushing superlatives but has also been credited with shedding new light on a much-studied period of art. The exhibit captured the way an intense three-way rivalry among Titian and two rising artists of the next generation, Tintoretto and Veronese, not only produced unforgettable images, but spurred the development of oil painting on canvas, a field then still quite young.

“Hot is the word for this show,’’ enthused The New York Times. The Times Literary Supplement in London called it “remarkable,’’ and the British arts magazine Apollo described it as “an outstanding curatorial debut for Mr. Ilchman.’’

The comments book at the end of the exhibition, too, is filled with expressions of gratitude: “Just visited sixteen or so of the Western world’s greatest museums in three hours - unforgettable to see this trio side-by-side.’’ “One of the best curated shows I’ve seen in years.’’ And, in the hand of an older person: “This is my 4th visit. This is one of the greatest shows ever presented by the MFA. As good as the Vienna Collection of 1955.’’

The French, you see, have their own plans for the show. It will be bigger, for starters - 75 paintings compared with 56 in Boston.

“The biggest conceptual change,’’ explains Ilchman in an e-mail, “is that they are adding paintings by six more artists in addition to the Big Three. The Louvre curators believe that their audiences have a greater familiarity with Venetian painting and would benefit from an expanded artistic dialogue.’’

Behind Ilchman’s matter-of-factness one senses the sting of an implied criticism - and not only of the people of Boston. After all, one of the great virtues of the Boston show was its laser-like focus on these three rivals and the creative exchange among them.

“No filler here, not an ounce of fat,’’ wrote New York Times art critic Holland Cotter. Instead, audiences were treated to an exhibition devoted exclusively to Titian, Tintoretto, and Veronese - three of the greatest painters of all time - along with two works from the workshop and circle of Titian’s teacher, Giovanni Bellini, to help kick off the story.

Ilchman says the Louvre will add about 40 more pictures for its version of the show. Some, he explains, are “loans that would never cross the Atlantic [because they are too fragile], some paintings we didn’t want in Boston, and a few very large format canvases, too big to transport, that are already in the Louvre.

“It will be exciting,’’ he adds, “to see the impact on the competition of some truly huge paintings.’’ But there is also a downside: The Louvre’s galleries are too high to install Tintoretto’s ceiling painting “The Contest Between Apollo and Marsyas,’’ on the ceiling, as Ilchman did to such dramatic effect in Boston.

Of course, shows like this take years to put together, and they face impediments every step of the way. Ilchman acknowledges that he could not have convinced many of the lenders to part with their paintings had the Louvre not agreed to come on board and partner with the MFA.

Originally, in 2003, Ilchman, a Tintoretto specialist, had proposed a major monographic exhibition on Tintoretto. Malcolm Rogers, the MFA’s director, “understood the scholarly relevance of a proper Tintoretto show and how it would be a coup for Boston,’’ says Ilchman.

The problem was, Tintoretto’s best works are in Europe, so borrowing them would be expensive and logistically difficult. Rogers asked Ilchman to think outside the box and try to come up with something more original - something that was not another solo show.

So Ilchman came up with the rivalry model, and a decision to focus on Venice’s Big Three - something that had never before been attempted in an exhibition. (The solo show might not have happened, but the current exhibition can still boast of being the best collection of Tintorettos ever assembled outside Venice and Madrid).

The beauty of the rivalry concept, as Ilchman puts it, is that “anybody can see how the artists responded to each other, or forged their own paths, in the paintings themselves. The visitor doesn’t need to take points . . . on faith, it’s all there in front of you. And of course by making a show of comparisons, it engages the viewer and helps them slow down and dwell in the pictures, and ultimately in the famously loose brushwork.’’

Of course, he acknowledges, “rivalry was not the only determining factor in the appearance of this art. The Big Three didn’t work in a vacuum. They were aware of other artists, other media, and of course responded to patrons’ wishes and market pressures. [But] these issues we deal with in some labels, and very thoroughly in the catalog, which is the proper place for them.’’

For his part, says Ilchman, one of the biggest realizations came from pondering a map he created, which is at the start of the show: Colored dots mark the sites of public commissions executed by the three artists.

“These artists made a point of covering the walls of their city,’’ Ilchman says. “None of these three painters moved permanently away from Venice, taking up a cushy job as a court painter somewhere. It is as if they each knew that the competition with the other two kept them on their toes and made them better artists.’’

For Ilchman, the show has been a career-defining event. Into it he has sunk not just time and expertise but emotion, too. He says he’s often asked if he has a favorite among the three painters. “To which I have to respond that I love all my children equally.’’

It’s going to be a tough act to follow. What will he do next?

He’s determined to stick with his specialty, Tintoretto, and produce a new and improved catalog raisonné, covering the artist’s complete works. The last one was completed in 1982 and suffers from what Ilchman calls, with a glint of mischief, a “gigantic, fantastic, fundamental error of conception’’ concerning timelines and attribution.

He says he loves Boston and the MFA and intends to stay. One idea he has is for a show about Venetian painting at the end of the Renaissance, between the plagues of 1576 and 1630, when the city was in terminal decline and the Baroque period was just beginning.

But first, he has to go to Paris and bid his children adieu.

Sebastian Smee can be reached at ssmee@globe.com.