The Dunedin Public Art Gallery's permanent collection exhibition Belonging has subsidiary themes and different exhibitions inside it, and serves to showcase a number of the gallery's great as well as some of its lesser holdings.
In D gallery, the first as you enter from the atrium, at the top of the stairs and the ramp there is the powerful Maratta tondo Saint Joseph and the Infant Christ.
Being a tondo, it is circular and highly suitable for this intimate and tender composition. It shows Joseph, husband of Mary the mother of Christ, seated and holding the child not on his knee but so their heads meet, with the baby apparently kissing the old man's cheek.
Their bodies form a circle with the heads together at the top. It's an unusual composition and a most unusual subject.
Depictions of the Virgin and Child were so common in the past that the galleries of Europe almost groan with them.
And even outside the galleries, the ones for sale and in private ownership are so numerous you're left wondering how much can remain after centuries which have also seen so much destruction.
But among this wealth of religious images, portrayals of Christ with what I suppose we can call his earthly father are rare indeed.
Apparently, the artist had a friend Giuseppe, the Italian form of ''Joseph'' who had recently had a son and this was painted for him.
It is an oil painting and has been in the gallery's collection since 1948. There is an engraving made after it but people in Europe had lost sight of the painting's whereabouts.
Carlo Maratta (1625-1713) was the leading painter in Rome late in the 17th century, when this was painted about 1687. It's a fine work by a significant artist and we're very lucky to have it. The theme of the exhibition in D gallery is ''Belonging''.
Down the stairs in the Port Otago Gallery, the theme is Profiler. Prominent on the further wall is William Dobson's portrait of Charles Gerard, 1st Earl of Macclesfield, painted about 1645.
Dobson has been called ''the English Van Dyck'' and was associated with him. The sobriquet was intended as a compliment, although it can sound demeaning.
It can be claimed quite plausibly Dobson was the first native English artist to paint at the level of the most accomplished Continentals.
The Renaissance had finally arrived in Albion. It was painted during the English civil war while the court was in exile at Oxford. Charles Gerard was a Cavalier fighting against the Parliamentary Roundheads.
Apparently, he was cruel and brutal but in this painting seems soft and tender. The cuirass and drapery are magnificent, as befits a Cavalier, who were known for the splendour of their apparel.
The gallery bought it in 1931 for, it seems, 400 - a substantial sum which seems worth every penny now. Not far along the wall is Marcus Gheeraerts the younger's portrait of Margaret Hay, Countess of Dunfermline, painted in 1615.
With his father, Gheeaerts was an import from Bruges in what is now Belgium at a time when Britain had to rely on continentals for work of this quality. Gheeraerts lived from 1561 to 1635 and this is a work of his maturity.
The sitter was the third wife of Alexander Seton, a significant figure in Scottish history. People admire the elaborate lace and the embroidery of her dress which are rendered with a jewelled perfection.
But it is the shy personality suggested by the treatment of her face which makes this a step beyond a mere display of her husband's wealth. It was given to the gallery by Mary, Dora and Esmond de Beer in 1974, who bought it in London that year.
Esmond wrote, ''With me it was a matter of first sight: a beautiful object and a feeling Dunedin would be an appropriate home for it.''
There are other good things in this show. The Landini wings in the neighbouring study gallery is another work of international quality, and another gift of the de Beers.
There could be many more if the walls weren't so sparsely hung. A significant portion of the gallery's space has been given to this permanent collection show.
As well as most of the ground floor, there's a substantial allocation on the first. But for the amount of space, the number of works is low. They aren't all masterpieces either.
Upstairs, where the subtheme is ''Wildlife'' are Arthur Wardle's Where the Ice King Reigns and his Queen of the Night. The first shows polar bears on ice floes, the second a panther slinking in the dark.
Wardle could paint all right but his imagination at times seems childlike. A former director hoped to dispose of these cuddly toys and exhibited them with other works to win approval. The polar bears are still with us.
Peter Entwisle is a Dunedin curator, historian and writer.
