Borrowed images

EACH DAY, VISITORS to the third floor of the Boston Public Library's McKim Building pass by a series of allegorical murals. For some, they are a destination: The series, called ''Triumph of Religion,'' is the work of the famous portrait artist John Singer Sargent. But few library patrons, whether connoisseurs or passersby, are likely aware that, less than 100 years ago, the series was the subject of a national controversy, one that has resonance today, as the Muslim world continues to seethe over the depictions of the prophet Mohammed.

The painting that sparked the outrage was Sargent's 1919 work ''Synagogue,'' in which the subject is depicted as a blindfolded old woman fallen to the floor, her crown toppled, the structure around her in ruins. The outrage it engendered was passionate, if civil by today's standards. The controversy has since receded into historical memory, yet the issues that surrounded the case are ones we still face: the place of religious art in public spaces, the role of private funding of public art, and how to reconcile free speech and minority sensibilities.

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The Boston Public Library, designed by architect Charles Follen McKim, is the city's most ebullient public building. McKim's 1890 design left prominent space on the library walls for art, and commissions for murals were given to top-name artists: Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, Edwin Austin Abbey, and John Singer Sargent. Sargent, given his choice of space and subject, chose the third-floor gallery, an austere place of dark limestone that surrounded the heavy, pedimented doorways to the special collections rooms. Surprisingly for a man of few personal religious convictions, he chose as his theme ''Triumph of Religion.''

Sargent found his narrative source for the murals in the writings of the French historian Ernest Renan, who emphasized Western religion's ''progress'' from paganism to Judaism to dogmatic Christianity to a personal Christianity as embodied (for Renan) in the Sermon on the Mount. (The latter view earned his writings a place on the Catholic church's Index of prohibited works.) Sargent divided his version of the narrative into segments portraying the pagan gods, the Israelites and their law and prophets, and the chief aspects of Christian doctrine. He deployed a wide range of painting styles from exotically decorative depictions of the Egyptian and Canaanite gods to naturalistic portrayals of the prophets.

But Sargent had more than religion on his mind. Born in Europe of American parents in 1856, he was a star by age 21. His work as a portraitist gave him access to wealthy patrons-and wealth of his own-but it also limited his standing in the art world, in which portrait painters occupied a low rung. The BPL commission was an opportunity to redefine his reputation and apply his technical prowess to historical and decorative painting.

The experience Sargent brought to his difficult theme was limited, however. Accustomed to working with live models or from nature, he was dependent on ''the thing seen.'' Where this was not possible-as it was not for most of ''Triumph of Religion''-he would turn to examples from art history, an approach that proved to be a great mistake.

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ALL STARTED WELL. The first installation, the 1895 ''Frieze of Prophets,'' was an instant success, reproduced widely and giving rise to claims that the series would become the ''American Sistine Chapel.'' The painting depicted the Hebrew prophets flanking an iconic rendering of Moses and the Tablets of the Law, and Sargent was in his element here. The painting, in a sense, is a group portrait, assembled from individual sketches of people and costumes he had made in Spain, North Africa, and back home in London.

For 24 years, the late prophets looked toward a blank space over the room's staircase. Then, in 1919, Sargent installed the two paintings that would be his last for the BPL: ''Synagogue'' and ''Church,'' placed to the left and right of an empty space reserved for what was to be the final installment, ''The Sermon on the Mount.''

''Church'' is represented as an inscrutable, young female figure sitting emotionless on a throne, the dying Jesus at her feet, surrounded by symbols of the Eucharist and the Gospels. Whether she is meant to be the Virgin Mary is not clear. But however open to interpretation ''Church'' may have been, the content of ''Synagogue'' was unequivocal. The painting was a reworking of anti-Semitic symbols of the Middle Ages that had become esoteric by Sargent's time. During the Middle Ages, Jews often were represented as blindfolded figures-not unable to see the ''light,'' just unwilling. Sargent's figure of Synagoga is shown blindfolded, her crown fallen, dethroned in her crumbling temple.

No sooner were the two new paintings unveiled than letters of protest began to be published, in the Jewish press, as well as in the secular and even in the Christian press. Frederick William Coburn, a writer for the Boston Herald, wrote, ''If one were a rabbi or a cantor, it might be a little distasteful to have this middle-age fashion of deprecating his ancient religion revived in a building supported by public taxation.''

And indeed rabbis were upset. Henry Raphael Gold, of Roxbury's Adath Jeshurun congregation, wrote in The Jewish Advocate that the murals did not represent the triumph of religion but, rather, the ''triumph of Christianity.'' Many Jews had praised ''Frieze of Prophets,'' but when seen in the context of the series, even that hitherto innocuous painting seemed biased. The Christian Old Testament had reordered the books of the Hebrew Bible, placing the prophets last, in order to facilitate a christological interpretation of the late prophets as pointing the way to Jesus-a view evident in Sargent's positioning of the figures.

Boston's Jewish Advocate called for the opinions of experts, supporters, and detractors, and invited the artist to explain his intentions. Sargent, who shied away from public debate and from public appearances (he was a stutterer in public, though not in private), responded by citing the antecedents of the imagery, specifically the cathedrals of Reims and Strasbourg, where the blindfolded, dethroned Synagoga appears in exterior carvings. This was hardly comforting; in 1349 Strasbourg had been the site of a mass cremation of Jews, who had been blamed for spreading the Black Death.

The Advocate asked for a ''more explicit statement,'' but none was forthcoming. Sargent knew he was in trouble-he remembered well the scandal that ensued when his suggestive portrait ''Madame X'' made her debut with a fallen gown strap in 1884-and he retreated to his rooms at the Hotel Vendome on Commonwealth Avenue. Depressed by the events, he abandoned the murals, never returning to ''The Sermon on the Mount.''

THE EVIDENCE SUGGESTS that Sargent harbored no intent to offend. He counted many Jewish friends among his intimates, including the London art dealers Joseph Duveen and Asher Wertheimer. He was surely aware of anti-Semitism-the Dreyfus Affair had exploded in 1894-but he also held the naive view that the existence of symbols in great works of the past gave them unquestionable legitimacy. The critic C. Lewis Hind wrote that Sargent spent an hour showing him and his wife the sources for ''Synagogue,'' in an attempt to give ''proof'' of the authority of his symbols.

Sargent also doesn't seem to have understood Boston's Jewish community. Boston was the last major American city to have a significant Jewish population. Its first Jewish congregation, Ohabei Shalom, was established in 1843, long after Jewish communities had been founded in other Colonial cities such as New York (1654), Newport (1680), and even after some younger cities such as Cincinnati (1824) and St. Louis (1839).

The few Jews who lived in Boston were subjected to persistent efforts at their conversion. It wasn't until 1821 that the Massachusetts Constitution granted equal rights to religious minorities. By the time ''Synagogue'' was unveiled in 1919, there were 80,000 Jews in Boston-over 4 percent of the city's population-but it would take many more years before they felt firmly established. The appearance at the Boston Public Library of an ''official'' work of art that depicted Judaism in a less-than-favorable light was seen as something worth fighting.

The debate became national as editorials appeared in Jewish and secular newspapers from New York to Detroit and the Central Conference of American Rabbis organized an official protest. Local action was taken in the courts and Legislature. (One anonymous critic took a different path, splattering black ink on the offending work-the only act of violence associated with the affair.) Coleman Silbert, a Jewish state representative, introduced a petition to the Legislature's Joint Judiciary Committee to remove ''Synagogue'' by a novel exercise of the right of eminent domain and place it with the Department of Education. Arguing for passage were representatives of the Federation of Protestant Churches, the Catholic Church, the Young Men's Christian Association, and various Jewish groups. The petition, which required the painting to be removed within six months, passed both houses and was signed into law by Governor Channing H. Cox. But the Department of Education wanted no part of the painting and pursued an extension. The matter languished, and in April 1924, the order was rescinded. The painting remained.

''Triumph of Religion'' is still an uncomfortable work for many people, for many reasons. After a recent restoration it's now easier to see, but still difficult to read. Yet even the most skeptical of us-and those who deplore the use of religious symbols in public buildings-have to acknowledge that the issues raised by Sargent's symbols are important and recurring and worth confronting, particularly in light of recent events. The Boston Public Library has been doing just that, through guided tours by well-informed docents and by sponsoring a website and a new guide to the murals. A work of public art that affords so great an opportunity to promote understanding must be some kind of masterpiece, albeit of a kind its creator never imagined.

Scott-Martin Kosofsky is the author of ''The Book of Customs,'' recently awarded a National Jewish Book Award. He is co-editor of ''The Jews of Boston'' and is working with art historian Sally M. Promey on a guide to the Sargent murals.