While the fall in the dollar is making Europe more expensive for Americans, airfares remain enticingly cheap. It wasn’t hard to decide to visit London for the National Gallery’s hyped Raphael exhibition as a Christmas treat.

The show, “Raphael: From Urbino to Rome”(which runs until January 16),is intended to explore the gestation of Raphael’s talent; he started painting in Urbino around 1500, moved to Rome in 1508, and the next year he was already at work decorating the pope’s apartments. Raphael dominated the artistic world of the Vatican until his untimely death in 1520.

The National Gallery has one of the great collections of Raphael paintings – especially the early works – and they are the majority of the show. A few scattered works by Pintoricchio, Perugino, Michelangelo (a drawing), and Leonardo (a drawing and a gorgeous compositional cartoon) give off a sense of context, but do nothing to establish it. I would say that Luca Signorelli and Perugino were the greatest influences on the young painter (along with his own father), but there is nary a Signorelli to be seen. Raphael copied a number of Perugino scenes in his early painting, but there is no chance in the exhibit to compare such pieces. Notably absent are the “Betrothal of the Virgins”(in Caen and Milan respectively). Raphael’s 1501 “Resurrection of Christ” and his 1502 “Mond Crucifixion” are here, but neither of the Peruginos they were copied from is on view. It was also essential to have included the greatest work of Raphael’s Perugian period, the “Oddi Coronation” (1503-04).

The show has far too many drawings, intended to describe Raphael’s working habits but at odds with a pursuit of his influences. Influence and practice are not parallel goals in art-historical scholarship but oft opposed ones. The show seems unable to decide what it wants to say – or more likely the necessary loans for the former show were not available and so it was beefed up with the latter idea. It is successful on neither front.

Beyond such criticisms, though, the art on display in the Sainsbury Wing is magnificent, and many of the juxtapositions are worth any amount of frequent-flyer miles. The highlights are two pairings: the first of the “Madonna of the Pinks” (1506-07) and a 1507 “Holy Family with the Lamb” from the Prado. The “Madonna” is a work of perfect felicity; her right sleeve a cascade of exceptional drama, pulling the eye downward while achieving dimension. The dimple at the base of her neck is the sort of touch that only the greatest masters can achieve.

The painting explains why the great collectors of a century ago – Morgan, Gardner, Widener, Mellon – bought not the art of their time, but instead coveted and paid vast sums for the best paintings of the Renaissance. They saw in this art (Raphael, most of all) an ideal of order akin to the best values of their society and culture, values increasingly distressed in the Gilded Age and the 20th century. Their investment in Raphaels, which they intended to give to the public, was a way of affirming what makes a successful society. Raphael’s Madonnas befit this with their painterly perfection.

The Prado’s “Holy Family” is a wonderful comparison to the “Madonna of the Pinks” with their contemporaneous virgins. (The head of Joseph, with its traces of both Leonardo and Michelangelo, is particularly fine and seems adventurous for Raphael in 1507.) Neither child, though, is well done. That came a year or two later and is confirmed in the magnificent pairing of the last room: Washington’s “Alba Madonna” (c. 1509-11) and the “Garvagh Madonna” (c. 1509-10). They seem so right together: done in the same distinctive blue and pink palette, with the landscape behind, and slight variations on the triangular arrangement of the Virgin with the Christ Child and the infant John the Baptist. Each painting informs the other and explains more and more how Raphael found his depicted ideal.

The final Madonnas were the peak of the show, but there were many delights. Raphael’s marvelous 1506 self-portrait from the Uffizi was shown near the Ashmolean’s drawing that may indeed be a self-portrait in chalk from a half decade earlier, and the exhibition had the three scenes that form the predella to the Met’s “Colonna Altarpiece” (c. 1504-5). The “Agony in the Garden” is always at the Met, but it was lovely to see it with its peers and compare the mishmash of styles Raphael adopted for this early grouping done for a convent in Padua.

What was perhaps strangest about the exhibition is its installation in the close, dingy galleries of the Sainsbury Wing. The National Gallery is characterized by some of the most beautiful hanging spaces on earth – high ceilings, wonderful light, and room for the crowds it draws. The Sainsbury is a curse on Raphael, which became clear as I crossed over into the museum proper to see the collection of Veroneses, installed with elegance and air in the old building. Why can modern architects not grasp what is needed by great art and its fans?

While I went to London to see a blockbuster, the best show I saw was a mere two paintings: “Manet: Face to Face” (the Courtauld Institute of Art until January 9). This is the hanging of “The Luncheon” (1868) and “A Bar at the Folies-Bergere” (1881-82) directly across from each other in a well-lit room at the top of Somerset House. The paintings are similar in size and composition, and feature a strong central character staring directly out at the viewer. The presentation underscores Manet’s core artistic concerns. Each picture shows him manipulating the viewer’s perspective and varying the centers of attention: intimating what is important, never telling. His is an art of idea and intention, a continual experiment with forms and detail. Manet’s pictorial decisions remain unsettling after a century and more. Why is the reflection of the young woman off in “Bar,” and what is her relation to the shadowy man? Are we in a home or a cafe in the “Luncheon,” and what is that armor doing in the chair? More and more unanswerable questions arise as you spend time with the paintings.

Manet sought not a Raphaelian idealized beauty, but a purity of depiction that put the viewer in suspense rather than wonderment. That beauty is only one of the possible effects of good painting is the lesson of Manet. It is also a key distinction between the values of the classical and the modern. We’ve recently had superb shows that examined the Spanish influence on Manet and on his attention to the still life, but here in this juxtaposition of just two paintings I saw a full exploration of Manet’s questing genius.

Far from a genius, but full of charm – and a lot of Manet – was the painter and printmaker William Nicholson (1872-1949), the subject of a show at the Royal Academy (until January 23). He will forever be known for his early woodcuts, which were bold and blocky, making equal use of color and empty space. They were a true innovation in British art at the turn of the century, but not financially successful, and so he turned to painting. To my eye, he painted too fast and left many works in an unfulfilled state. He also experimented in too many styles without evolving any of them in 50 years to even half the extent that he evolved printmaking in just two or three. But there is excellence in his Whistler-influenced portraits, particularly the one of Max Beerbohm (1903), and his still lifes are true achievements in a genre not much valued in the 20th century. His 1911 arrangements with Lowestoft and Lustre bowls were among the most gorgeous paintings I saw in London.

And it is a city full of gorgeous art. Everywhere I turned there was an important painting to see, and dozens to be deferred for another trip. The Courtauld required two visits even on a trip of four days, and, from there on day one, I hurried to the Wallace Collection to see the 4th Marquess of Hertford’s great selection of Boningtons. The museum is featuring a Boucher exhibition, but he is a painter whose attractions have always escaped me, and instead I enjoyed the Dutch rooms – Hobbemas, de Hoochs, and a Hals to die for. Those of you who caught the Met’s Negroli show back in 1998 will understand my pleasure in spotting two Filippo Negroli pieces while browsing amongst the Wallace’s martial glories.

They’ve glassed over the courtyard, and, happily drinking tea and reading a Bonington monograph there one afternoon, I realized what the Morgan Library had hoped to achieve with its last expansion. Let’s hope Renzo Piano gets it right this time. London is full of these smaller houses of delight, with gems hidden from the normal tourism commerce. I spent delighted hours with the magnificent Old Masters at Apsley House and saw no more than 10 other people. The Soane Museum was much the same.

London and Paris will always beckon to New York’s art lovers. Late Caravaggio in London this coming spring will have an insidious pull. But traveling to art shows can be just as profitable in St. Louis, Philadelphia, and Boston (we all must spend as much time as possible at the Gardner before the expansion ruins it).The art riches of our own city are often a bit overwhelming. Why not take a few days, check into the Prince of Wales, and really look at pictures? After all, when was the last time you were able to relax and spend time with the Gubbio Studiolo at the Met or the Frick’s van Eyck or Matisse’s “Piano Lesson” at MoMA.