Denis Mahon

For the Irish officer, see Denis Mahon (British Army officer). Sir John Denis Mahon, (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 Ludgrove School, 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.