News that the artist Odd Nerdrum is begging the Kingdom of Norway to be spared a year in jail is the dispatch that arrests our attention this morning. Nerdrum is a titanic figure in the tradition of Titian, say, or Rembrandt. He has been convicted in a tax case over money held in a bank at Austria. What a tragedy were the Norwegians to fail to resolve the case in a way that lets the 71-year-old artist remain free. Yet the Norwegians are reportedly even vowing to prohibit him from painting while in prison.

If we were the King of Norway — a stretch, to be sure — we’d require Nerdrum to paint. Or, if he needs to be fined, to require him to make a masterpiece for the Kingdom’s holdings. Particularly because, by Nerdrum’s account, the money at issue was being held in reserve to make good on a noble quest. It related to Nerdrum’s career-long effort to discover the actual techniques and methods of the painters, like Rembrandt, who created the most valuable objects in history.

For years Nerdum was experimenting with medium. This is the liquid or gel or oil that is used to carry and bind pigments. Rembrandt’s paintings owe a portion of their special beauty to the medium the master used. In the course of Nerdrum’s heroic quest, as we follow the story from various news accounts and postings on the Web, he used a batch of medium that went bad. On some of these works, the paint failed catastrophically, and years after the works were sold.

It’s the worst nightmare of artists. Nerdum did the honorable thing, which is to offer to repair, repaint, or replace the paintings or reimburse the customers. He represents that it was against this contingency that a hoard of cash — reportedly somewhere close to $1 million — was kept at Austria. The Norwegians think it should be taxed as income. It just strikes us as absurd to treat the whole thing as a criminal matter.

One way to think of Nerdrum is as what the Japanese call — it’s one of the great features of their culture — a living national treasure. We’re not a fan of all his paintings; some of them are too surreal for our taste (he calls his school of art “kitsch,” though to our ear that word conveys something less serious than Nerdrum’s oeuvre). For his abilities as a painter, in any event, our admiration is unalloyed. He has few, if any, peers.

Modesty isn’t his long suit. There is a film of him visiting the wing of the Hermitage containing its astounding collection of Rembrandts. The film captures an encounter before the deft Dutchman’s “Danaë,” which was badly damaged in 1985 by a madman who splashed it with acid, destroying Danaë’s face. Restorers spent 12 years repairing it. Yet Nerdum is aghast at the job they did.

When he makes that known to the docent, she grows exasperated and says, “If you can do better, please . . .” At which point a chuckle is heard from the crowd. It’s unclear whether the hapless docent grasped that she was speaking to one of the few men who has lived since Rembrandt who might well be able to bring the painting back up to standard — or better. What a tragedy it would be to put him in jail and deny him, while there, the freedom to paint.