ATHENS,, GA (PNAN) – The Georgia Museum of Art will present the exhibition “Beyond the Medici: The Haukohl Family Collection” from Saturday, February 1 to May 18, 2025. The exhibition illustrates how Florentine artists of the 17th and 18th centuries influenced European art history, politics and philosophy.
During the High Renaissance, Florence was an important center for the arts, fueled by the powerful Medici family of bankers, politicians and Vatican popes who served as patrons for many artists. Haukohl’s focus on the Florentine baroque sheds light on a unique chapter of the baroque era because during this time, artists developed a style that was sensuous, deeply religious, poetic and classical.
The exhibition comes from the largest and most important collection of Florentine baroque art outside of Italy, assembled over more than 40 years by Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl, an art collector and cofounder of the Medici Archive Project. Extraordinary allegories, religious motifs, genre scenes and portraits by Jacopo da Empoli, Felice Ficherelli, Francesco Furini and Onorio Marinari form the core of the collection.
Included in the show are paintings by three generations and over 100 years of the Dandini family, beginning with Cesare Dandini (1596-1657). Dandini founded a school of painters of classical themes personified by female figures, whose beauty was calculated to appeal to private collectors. His younger brother, Vincenzo (1609-1675), is represented in the exhibition by impressive representations of St. Mark the Evangelist and the Goddess Juno. The leader of the younger generations of the dynasty, which extended into the 18th century, was Pietro Dandini (1646-1712) whose large canvas “Esther Before Ahasuerus” lends a splendidly colorful presence to the show.
The exhibition also devotes a section to artists, writers and scholars that sheds light on the intellectual history of Florence under the reign of the Medici grand dukes. Four polychrome stucco reliefs by Antonio Monauti show Renaissance greats Michelangelo Buonarroti, Niccolò Machiavelli, Marsilio Ficino and the polymath Galileo Galilei.
As a whole, the exhibition shows the deep interest of the Florentine baroque for science and for painting based on disegno (drawing). Several art works feature magnificent 17th-century period frames.
A series of related events can be found at: https://georgiamuseum.org/exhibit/beyond-the-medici-the-haukohl-family-collection.