John Pope-Hennessy

Born into an Irish Catholic family in the Belgravia district of Central London, Pope-Hennesssy's father was Major-General Richard Pope-Hennessy, who was the son of the politician John Pope Hennessy. Pope Hennessy's mother was Dame Una Pope-Hennessy. He was the elder of two sons; his younger brother, James Pope-Hennessy was noted writer.

Pope-Hennessy was educated at Downside School, a Catholic boarding school for boys, in Stratton-on-the-Fosse. He then went on to Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he specialized in modern history. At Oxford, he was introduced by Logan Pearsall Smith, a family friend, to Kenneth Clark, who later became a mentor.

Upon graduation, Pope-Hennessy embarked his journeyman years by traveling in continental Europe and becoming acquainted with art collections, both public and private.

Commemorative plaque in honor of Pope-Hennessy affixed to Palazzo Canigiani, where he lived and died in Florence.

Between 1955 and 1963, Pope-Hennessy's three-volume Introduction to Italian Sculpture was published, covering Gothic, Renaissance and High Renaissance and Baroque sculpture.[1] The following year, he was named Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Cambridge.

Pope-Hennessy served as the director of the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1967 and 1973, and then as director of the British Museum from 1974 until 1976. There, he was nicknamed by colleagues as "The Pope".[2]

Traumatized by the murder of his gay brother James in January 1974, Pope-Hennessy left the British Museum after only two years as director.[3] Initially, he went to Tuscany, but was enticed by an offer from the Metropolitan Museum of Art to head its department of European painting, and moved to New York City. He combined this curatorial post with a professorship at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts. In 1986, Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, created the John Pope Hennessy Curatorship of European Paintings.[4]

Pope-Hennessy was also one of many scholars to serve on the board of Save Venice Inc., a non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation and preservation of Venetian cultural heritage.

Pope-Hennessy's grave at the Cimitero degli Allori in Florence.

Pope-Hennessy retired at the age of seventy-five and moved permanently to Florence with his lover, Michael Mallon, and resided at Palazzo Canigiani, where he died five years later.[5] 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.

• A Lecture on Nicholas Hilliard, 1949
• Introduction to Italian Sculpture (3 vols.), 1955–1963
• Donatello: Sculptor, 1993
• Essays on Italian Sculpture, 1968
• Catalogue of Italian Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum (3 vols.), 1964

• List of directors of the British Museum

• Finding aid for the John Pope-Hennessy Papers at the Getty Research Institute.