11/08/2026
A new Book has just been published:
Denis Mahon e la riscoperta della pittura emiliana del Seicento – “Denis Mahon and the Rediscovery of seventeenth-century Emilian Painting” by Valentina Balzarotti – Editor: Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura
This is a truly remarkable work by the young scholar Valentina Balzarotti, bringing to light many aspects of Emilian art and of Denis Mahon’s scholarly career that were previously unknown to researchers, particularly as many of those who might have known them are no longer alive. The publication therefore serves as an important act of preservation, safeguarding an exceptionally rich and unique body of cultural knowledge for future generations.
The book traces the gradual rediscovery of seventeenth-century Emilian painting through the work of the British connoisseur and collector Denis Mahon (1910–2010). Drawing on a selection of previously unpublished letters, it reconstructs three decades of Mahon’s activity, from the 1930s to the late 1950s.
His correspondence with scholars such as Otto Kurz and Hylton Thomas sheds light on his intellectual formation, his early research on Guercino, and the development of his seminal book Studies in Seicento Art and Theory, published in 1947. The letters from the 1950s, meanwhile, reveal Mahon’s growing network of dealers, collectors, and museum curators worldwide, as well as his increasing authority as a scholar and his crucial contribution to the organisation of some of the most important post-war exhibitions of Italian art.
The correspondence with his mother Lay Alice Mahon also reveals the human element of this grand art historian that only a very few people who were very close to him had the privilege to witness.❤️
Title: Denis Mahon e la riscoperta della pittura emiliana del Seicento
Author: Valentina Balzarotti
Series: Alti Studi sull’Età e la Cultura del Barocco
Editor: Fondazione 1563 per l’Arte e la Cultura
Year: 2026
Pages: 508 pp.
Isbn: 9788899808655
