Sir John Wyndham Pope-HennessyCBEFBAFSA (13 December 1913 – 31 October 1994), was a British art historian. Pope-Hennessy was director of the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1967 and 1973, and director of the British Museum between 1974 and 1976. He was a scholar of Italian Renaissance art. Many of his writings, including the tripartite Introduction to Italian Sculpture, and his magnum opus, Donatello: Sculptor, are regarded as classics in the field.
Upon graduation, Pope-Hennessy embarked his journeyman years by travelling in continental Europe and becoming acquainted with art collections, both public and private.
During World War II he served as a Flight Lieutenant in the Deputy Directorate of Intelligence at the Air Ministry.[1]
Career
Between 1955 and 1963, Pope-Hennessy's three-volume Introduction to Italian Sculpture was published, covering Gothic, Renaissance and High Renaissance and Baroque sculpture.[2] The following year, he was named Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge.
Besides his own scholarly publications, some of which became classics and were often reprinted, and his responsibilities as a museum director, he provided his name and expertise for others (such as Sotheby's or the Collins Encyclopedia of Antiques). He also wrote a foreword for Helmut Gernsheim's photographies of Beautiful London, contributed to a book on Westminster Abbey (1972), and wrote an autobiography that was published in 1991.
Death and legacy
Although never really rich, Pope-Hennessy improved his financial situation substantially in the 1980s by selling two paintings he had acquired in 1946 in the sale of the Bridgewater House collection: Domenichino's Christ Carrying the Cross, which he had bought for GBP38, to the Getty Museum for USD750,000 and Annibale Carracci's Vision of Saint Francis, which he had bought for only GBP28, to the National Gallery of Canada for GBP100,000.[8] With these proceeds he was able to afford his new lodging in Florence.
Hence, he retired at the age of seventy-five and moved permanently to Florence with his lover, Michael Mallon,[9] and resided at Palazzo Canigiani, where he died five years later.[10] Pope-Hennessy is buried in the Cimitero degli Allori in Florence. His gravestone includes a quote from the First Epistle to the Corinthians in the Bible. The remains of his impressive art collection in Florence were sold two years after his death for roughly GBP1,000,000 at Christie's in New York.[11]
Bibliography
Sassetta, Chatto & Windus 1939
Sienese Quattrocento Painting, Phaidon 1947
The Drawings of Domenichino in the Collection of His Majesty the King at Windsor Castle, Phaidon 1948
A Lecture on Nicholas Hilliard, Home and Van Thal 1949
The Life of Benvenuto Cellini. Written by Himself, introduced and illustrated by JPH, Phaidon 1949
Uccello. The Complete Work of the Great Florentine Painter, Phaidon 1950
Fra Angelico. Complete Edition, Phaidon 1952
Piero Della Francesca, The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures, 1954
Introduction to Italian Sculpture (3 vols.), Phaidon 1955–1963, 3rd revised ed. 1996
Vol. I: Italian Gothic Sculpture, 1955
Vol. II: Italian Renaissance Scutpture, 1958
Vol. III: Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture, 1963
The Portrait in the Renaissance, the A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts, Phaidon 1963
Renaissance Bronzes from the Samuel H. Kress Collection, Phaidon 1965
Essays on Italian Sculpture, Phaidon 1968
The Frick Collection. An Illustrated Catalogue, assisted by Anthony F. Radcliffe, Princeton Univ. Press 1970
Vol. III: Sculpture – Italian
Vol. IV: Sculpture – German, Netherlandish French and British
Raphael, The Wrightsman Lectures, delivered under the Auspices of the New York University Institute of Fine Arts, Harper & Row 1970
The Study and Criticism of Italian Sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art/Princeton Univ. Press 1980
Donatello, photography by Liberto Perugi, critical apparatus by Giovanna Ragionieri, Cantini (Florence) 1985 (Italian)
Learning to Look. An Autobiography, Heinemann 1991
The Piero Della Francesca Trail, Twenty-Third Walter Neurath Memorial Lecture, Thames & Hudson 1991
Andrea Mantegna, photography by David Finn, Olivetti/Electa 1992
Paradiso: The Illuminations to Dante's Divine Comedy by Giovanni di Paolo, Random House 1993
Donatello: Sculptor, Abbeville 1993
Victoria and Albert Museum publications
As the museum's director he wrote the foreword for several exhibition catalogues –Musical Instruments as Works of Art (1968), Berlioz and the Romantic Imagination, English Watches, Fine Illustrations in Western European Printed Books and The Fashionable Lady in the 19th Century (all in 1969), Charles Dickens (1970), Kokoschka: Prints and Drawings (1971), a.o.– and introduced the Museum's first Yearbook in 1969. But even before that he wrote the texts and was responsible for the following publications
Victoria and Albert Museum Monographs
No. 1: Donatello's Relief of the Ascension with Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter, HMSO 1949
No. 2: The Virgin with the Laughing Child, HMSO 1949
No. 5: Italian Gothic Sculpture in the Victoria & Albert Museum, HMSO 1952
No. 6: The Virgin and Child by Agostino di Duccio, HMSO 1952
No. : Samson and a Philistine by Giovanni Bologna, HMSO 1954
The Raphael Cartoons (foreword), HMSO 1950
Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum (3 vols.), HMSO 1964
An Ivory by Giovanni Pisano, Museum Bulletin 1965
An American Museum of Decorative Art and Design: Designs from the Cooper-Hewitt Collection, New York, HMSO 1973
Metropolitan Museum of Art catalogues
Secular Painting in 15th-Century Tuscany: Birth Trays, Cassone Panels, and Portraits, co-ed. with Keith Christiansen, 1980
France in the Golden Age: Seventeenth-Century French Paintings in American Collections, with Pierre Rosenberg, Grand Palais, Paris, 1982
The Jack and Belle Linsky Collection in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1984
Italian Paintings in the Robert Lehman Collection, 1986
Giovanni di Paolo, Museum Bulletin Vol. XLVI, Nr. 2, 1988
The Metropolitan Museum also published John Pope-Hennessy: A Bibliography in 1986, compiled by Everett Fahy
Posthumous compilations
On Artists and Art Historians: Selected Book Reviews by John Pope-Hennessy, Villa i Tatti: The Harvard Univ. Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 12, edited by Walter Kaiser and Michael Mallon, L. S. Olschki (Florence) 1993
Italian Art 1200-1800 from the Libraries of Sir John Pope-Hennessy & Rudolf Wittkower with Some Additions, Catalogue No. 188 (listed are 1214 monographs plus 938 general books), Ursus Books 1996