The man who rescued Caravaggio

Sir Denis Mahon arrived at The Spectator 40 minutes before he was due to be interviewed. While I scuffed around in search of tape recorders and sensible questions, Britain’s most distinguished collector and historian of Italian art sat in the editor’s office, waiting. Every now and then I looked at him through the door jamb. He stared peacefully into the middle distance with his hands folded in his lap: nearly 100 years and £20 million worth of old man, upholstered in impeccable three-piece pinstripe.

Eventually I introduced myself. I want to ask you lots of things, I said, about this government, about how badly they treat art collectors. I gather you’re going to see the Prime Minister. … ‘Well,’ said Sir Denis, ‘perhaps I should explain a little about my history first?’ Oh. Sorry. Of course.

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, leaning back. ‘I’m aged 94 now and I’ve been an art historian all my life and by extension a collector. I’ve played an important part, I can say, in rehabilitating the seicento,’ he searched my face for a sign of intelligence. ‘That’s 17th-century painting in Italy which starts with Caravaggio and goes on …well anyway, the point is that when I started in the early 1930s, these painters were absolutely despised by everyone. With the interest in the primitives in the 1840s had come the idea that later painters were “insincere” and no one wanted them.’ Sir Denis peered at me again through enormous black-rimmed spectacles: did I get it? After a few minutes, blank with panic, I did. Although Renaissance art has never gone out of fashion, until relatively recently you could pick up a Caravaggio, a Carracci, a Guido Reni or a Guercino for practically nothing. ‘I had the field to myself for 30 years,’ said Sir Denis, ‘because no one realised that sincerity is a different thing in different periods.’