Portraits of another time.

Along, long time well before cell phones could take ago, pictures, prior to the development of photography in general, portrait artists captured how people looked with oil on canvas. The really good portrait artists also revealed something of their subject's soul. So it was with Gilbert Stuart, the famed portraitist who captured both the body and soul of many Founding Fathers. Pull out a dollar, and there's a Stuart portrait staring back at you in the form of George Washington.

An exhibit of Gilbert Stuart's work opened in New York last year at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and moved this year to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it will be on display until July 31.

Imagine my surprise at the exhibit when I ran into two bishops--one from Baltimore, the other from Boston. No, they were not among the other visitors but were two of the portraits in the show. John Carroll and John Lefebvre de Cheverus were painted by Stuart and are but two of the nearly 100 portraits on display.

John Carroll, the first bishop of the United States, is close to a household name in American Catholic history. Maryland-born in 1736, educated in France, and ordained as a Jesuit, he was elected by his fellow clergy in 1790. He participated in the founding of many Catholic institutions, including what are today Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore. Carroll's personal relationships with many of the Founding Fathers and his genuine regard for their vision of separation of church and state got American Catholicism off to a great start.

He was nearing 70 when Stuart painted him. The elderly Carroll is portrayed with his bishop's cross prominent, a breviary in his lap, and books in the background reflecting the many educational institutions he helped found.

The other bishop I met through Stuart's portraits has one of the longest names I have ever seen: Jean-Louis Anne Magdelaine Lefebvre de Cheverus. He was named the first bishop of Boston in 1808 and served until 1823 when he became bishop of Montauban, France and eventually archbishop of Bordeaux, France. Shortly before his death in 1836 he was named a cardinal.

When the pope transferred Cheverus from Boston to France, a group of high-church Episcopalians expressed their dismay: "We hold him to be a blessing and a treasure in our social community which we cannot part with and which, without injustice to any man we may affirm if withdrawn from us can never be replaced." But Cheverus was transferred as originally planned.

Stuart's portrait of Cheverus captures him as an engaging diplomat bedecked with his bishop's cross and ring and holding a prayer book. The drapery behind him, a signature of many portraits, is arranged into a canopy reflecting his status as bishop. The exhibit book captures this man's modus operandi nicely: "Cheverus spent 27 years inviting, but not pressing, Bostonian believers to join him in his faith, to explore their fascination with Catholicism."

It was nice to meet these two extraordinary bishops who forged a respected and credible Catholicism in this country. You can meet them, too, if you get to the National Gallery of Art before July 31.

PETER GILMOUR ([e-mail]) teaches at the Institute of Pastoral Studies of Loyola University Chicago.