Pope-Hennessy, Sir John

Pope-Hennessy, Sir John (b London, 13 Dec. 1913; d Florence, 31 Oct. 1994). British art historian. He was director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1967–73, director of the British Museum, 1974–6, and from 1977 to 1987 consultative chairman, department of European paintings, Metropolitan Museum, New York, and professor of fine arts at New York University. His many publications made him perhaps the doyen in the field of Italian Renaissance art among English writers. They include the magisterial An Introduction to Italian Sculpture in three parts (all of which have subsequently appeared in revised editions), Italian Gothic Sculpture (1955), Italian Renaissance Sculpture (1958), and Italian High Renaissance and Baroque Sculpture (1963), an edition of Cellini's Autobiography (1949), and monographs on Giovanni di Paolo (1937), Sassetta (1939), Uccello (1950, revised 1972), Fra Angelico (1952, revised 1974), Raphael (1970), Luca della Robbia (1980), and Cellini (1985). His autobiography, Learning to Look, was published in 1991.