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Sir John Denis Mahon, CH, CBE (8 November 1910 – 24 April 2011)〔 was a British collector and historian of Italian art. Considered to be one of the few art collectors who was also a respected scholar, he is generally credited, alongside Sacheverell Sitwell and Tancred Borenius,〔 with bringing Italian pre-Baroque and Baroque painters to the attention of English-speaking audiences, reversing the critical aversion to their work that had prevailed from the time of John Ruskin. ==Biography== Born in London into a wealthy Anglo-Irish family, his father John FitzGerald Mahon (fourth son of Sir William Vesey Ross Mahon, 4th Baronet (1813–1893)),〔 was a member of the family that had prospered from the Guinness Mahon merchant bank fortune; and the grandson, through his mother Lady Alice Evelyn Browne, of Henry Browne the fifth Marquess of Sligo.〔 After attending Eton College, he went up to Christ Church, University of Oxford, where he received an MA.〔 A lover of opera, he decided not to enter the family business but study art, spending a year working at the Ashmolean Museum under the supervision of Kenneth Clark.〔 Clark then suggested him to his friend Nikolaus Pevsner, who had just joined the newly formed Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Pevsner introduced Mahon to Italian Mannerist and Baroque painting, and also gave him private tuition.〔 Mahon bought his first artwork, Guercino's ''Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph'' in 1934 in Paris for £120.〔 He subsequently met art historian Otto Kurz, whom he frequently used as an Italian translator, in the late 1930s, and together they travelled to Stalinist-Russia to study Italian masters.〔 In 1936, Mahon began a long association with the National Gallery.〔 Serving as an honorary attache (informal, unpaid curator), he offered to buy Guercino's ''Elijah Fed By Ravens'' from the Barberini collection in Rome, and then sell it to the Gallery. However, Clark who was now the Gallery's Director, felt that it would be impossible to persuade the trustees of the merits of buying an Italian baroque painting.〔 As a result Mahon decided to form his own collection, holding the pieces until such time as the national collections would be interested in them.〔 Mahon later twice served as a trustee of the National Gallery (1957–64; 1966–73), he was instrumental in pushing through important acquisitions, including Reni's ''Adoration of the Shepherds'' and with fellow trustee the sculptor Henry Moore Caravaggio's ''Salome Receives the Head of St John the Baptist''.〔 Mahon's ''Studies in Seicento Art and Theory'', a series of essays promoting Italian art of the 17th century, was published in 1947. In the 1960s, Mahon and Sir Anthony Blunt became embroiled in a public feud over the iconography of the paintings of Nicolas Poussin, a subject in which both had published extensively and were recognised experts.〔''Anthony Blunt: His Lives'', by Miranda Carter, 2001.〕 In the 1970s he came into disagreement with Edward Heath's Paymaster-General, David Eccles, who proposed charging for museum entry. This came to a head in 1970 when Mahon attempted to pay the capital taxes on his deceased mother's estate by offering ''The Coronation of the Virgin'' by Annibale Carracci from his collection. Worth substantially more than the taxes payable, after HM Treasury declined to credit Mahon with the difference, in 1971 he sold it to the Metropolitan Museum, New York.〔 In the 1990s, Mahon donated his entire 57 piece art collection to various museums in the UK, the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna and the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.〔 In December 2007, a painting Mahon bought for £50,400 the previous year (and which was considered to be the work of an anonymous follower of Caravaggio) was authenticated by him as a true Caravaggio. It is an early version of the painting ''The Cardsharps''. Mahon turned 100 in November 2010. Mahon lived at 33 Cadogan Square. He died on 24 April 2011, aged 100. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Denis Mahon」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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