The Art Newspaper

Italy honours memory of Sir Denis Mahon with an exhibition

Guercino show at the Palazzo Barberini in Rome will be dedicated to the British scholar

By The Art Newspaper. Web only
Published online: 21 December 2011

Sir Denis Mahon

The British scholar, collector and lobbyist for the arts, Sir Denis Mahon, who died on 24 April aged 100, is being commemorated by an exhibition in the Palazzo Barberini in Rome of 36 works by the 17th-century painter, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, known as Guercino (20 December-29 April 2012).

Mahon was was considered something of an esteemed friend of Italy for his scholarship that put the once unfashionable field of Italian baroque painting on the map, his readiness to give attributions to paintings on an unpaid, gentlemanly basis, and for leaving seven paintings to the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna.