If you visit the Knights of Columbus Museum in New Haven, Conn., this spring or summer, prepare to be comforted, surprised and challenged.

And that's just when you first walk in.

In the museum's featured exhibit gallery a beautiful bronze sculpture of Mother Teresa, looking you in the eye with great love, steps toward you. The saintly nun carries a dying child in her arms; at her feet, a second suffering child implores her help. The work captures her features and radiates her compassion enough to stop you in your tracks.

This powerful sculpture is part of a show TITLEd “Gismondi: A Journey Through the Art and Faith of a Remarkable Italian Sculptor.” This exhibit, which runs through Sept. 2, marks the only U.S. presentation of the works of Italian master Tomasso Gismondi.

“We've brought his museum in Anagni (Italy) to New Haven for the people in the United States to see,” explains Larry Sowinski, director of the Knights' museum. “These are the artist's favorite pieces.”

Among the most striking are a marble Resurrected Christ and a series of bronze bas-relief Madonnas. The latter radiate the love of mother for child that Gismondi, now 96 years old, has favored as a major theme throughout his long career.

The sculptor has always insisted that art must be “clear, intelligible and real.” His vision, carried out over a 70-year career, has attracted hundreds of commissions for statues, reliefs, portals, medallions and coins. His patrons have included the Vatican, St. Peter's Basilica, the town of Assisi and Lanciano's eucharistic-miracle sanctuary.

Gismondi, I learned on my tour of the impressive show, crafts beautiful, evocative images that tell striking stories of the Catholic faith. This show presents 48 of these stories.

Divinity on Display

In one bronze bas-relief, Gismondi interprets the centuries-old icon of the Madonna of Czestochowa, Poland's most sacred image. While Gismondi sculpted his original for Pope John Paul II, on display here is the artist's one and only duplicate, which differs from the original merely in its patina. In 1986, the Holy Father showed his high regard for Gismondi by paying a visit to the sculptor's museum-studio south of Rome.

The sculptor's third favorite theme is nature. Even in exploring this theme, he often brings in the sacred, at least indirectly. He concentrated on sculpting horses because he considers their proportions, graceful movements and vitality as God's perfect creation. This exhibit's quartet of large bronze horses, the Quadriga, rear up as though about to gallop off their display.

Gismondi's art is also serene. The show's studies of the Madonna and Child and interpretations of the Annunciation give off a peaceful glow. But even they aren't motionless. They embody the gentlest movement, as if the breath of the Holy Spirit is whispering their details and emotions to us.

In one, the artist captures the warmth of Mary's motherly affection in bronze relief as she tenderly kisses the tiny hand of baby Jesus.

Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection accounts for one-fourth of this exhibit. No one walks away unmoved by the nearly life-sized figure of the Savior on one wall. Jesus' crucified body is without the cross, yet we can't help but feel his pain and the weight of his body pulling against the nails as he looks up to heaven.

This show gives us a rare opportunity. We can examine Gismondi's small study model for the monumental Carolingian cross he completed for the Chapel of the Three Saints (Benedict, Cyril, and Methodius) under St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Then we can see his changes in the enormous “original” just five minutes from the museum in St. Mary's Church in New Haven — Gismondi actually made two exactly alike.

This second six-foot, 400-pound Carolingian cross, modeled after the one Charlemagne donated to the Vatican, is suspended above the altar in St. Mary's, where the Knights of Columbus was founded in 1882.

Speaking of Columbus, we can marvel at what should have been a modern-day colossus. In the Christopher Columbus Model, a 52-inch high bronze, Columbus stands atop a half globe. It was Gismondi's dream for Europe's own 250-foot tall “Statue of Liberty” in Genoa for the 500th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of the New World. But the Italian government, under pressure by various political interests, decided to put the kibosh on any such monument.

In “Gismondi: A Journey Through the Art and Faith of a Remarkable Italian Sculptor,” the artist gets his due — and we're all the richer for it.

Joseph Pronechen writes from Trumbull, Connecticut.