The Body Electric; From Rome to Dublin, Europe's art museums offer a dazzling range of works that glorify the human image.(Calendar)

Byline: Peter Plagens

Perfect living bodies will be in Athens this summer, working up a competitive sweat. But perfect marble, bronze and painted bodies can be found all over that other glorious classical city, Rome--not to mention much of the rest of Europe. Indeed, many of this summer's premier art offerings glorify the human image. NEWSWEEK takes you on a whirlwind tour:

Begin with "Guercino: Poetry and Feeling in 17th Century Painting" (through June 30), a startling show of paintings from a versatile old master (madonnas, mythology, martyrs) who could portray the subtleties of human flesh with the best of them. And it's in one of those ad hoc venues that are de rigueur in Rome--in this case, a large gallery deep inside the sooty bustle of the main train station, called Ala Mazzoniana della Stazione Termini.

If Guercino is too soft on the contours of the figure for your taste, a little jewel of a show (through June 29) called "Roman Panel Painting From Giotto to Cavallini" at the Capitoline Museum could be just your thing. As much work went into preparing the panels (coated with animal glue, gesso, gold leaf and more gesso) as into the rendering of sharp-edged, brilliantly colored images of Jesus. Sadly, these 13th- to 14th-century medieval panels were often destroyed or whitewashed when the Renaissance rendered them insufficiently realistic. The exhibition displays about two dozen survivors whose glory is poignantly evident only in meticulous, partial preservation.

Where better to study how to clothe the human body than at "Giorgio Armani: Retrospective," the gigantic Guggenheim-organized exhibition of the Milanese couturier's work? Its dizzying array of garments, working sketches and video documentation is up through Aug. 1 in--we're not kidding--the ancient baths of the Emperor Diocletian, which Michelangelo is said to have helped restore in the 1560s.

Sometimes, though, a temporary break from Rome's unrelenting obsession with the human body is in order. In the massive, marble Complesso del Vittoriano, the early Swiss modernist Paul Klee puts only whimsically abstracted figures--and only occasionally--into his little watercolors and oils (the show runs through June 27). For complete abstention, we recommend an exhibition (through June 25) of very small, delicate abstract sculptures fashioned from horsehair and the like by 38-year-old German artist Christiane Lohr. They're so gossamer that the gallery--Studio Stefania Miscetti, in the hip Trastevere neighborhood--posts a sign asking visitors not to blow on them.

Moving beyond Rome, our tour takes a classical turn at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, where the high Renaissance is embodied in all its sunny, linear perfection by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), whom some call the most-loved painter ever--think of the reproductions of "The Birth of Venus" hanging in parlors worldwide. That masterpiece is permanently ensconced in the Galleria degli Uffizi and doesn't show up in Botticelli shows, which are very rare to begin with. But 25 of his other paintings, together with 16 by his only artistic heir, Filippino Lippi, are on view through July 11.