21 Dec 4th-Dec 10th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | Taste of Italy See Baroque masterworks at Phoenix Art Museum. BY ERIC VANDERWALL W hen Sir Mark Fehrs Haukohl and his brothers were growing up, their parents often took them to galleries and museums to teach them about art. On one trip, when the brothers were around 10 to 12 years old, their parents told them they could each pick a piece they wanted. “My older brother picked a great water- color from Audubon,” Haukohl recalls. “I picked three heads by Otto Dix and my little brother picked an Old Master painting.” And so the young boys became part of their family’s tradition of collecting original works by major artists. Haukohl later developed his interest in the Old Masters (the great painters of Europe from roughly the 15th century through the beginning of the Romantic period in the late 18th century), with a particular focus on collecting works from the Baroque period in Florence (the 17th and early 18th centuries). Over the last 40 years, Haukohl has acquired what is now the largest and most important private collec- tion of Florentine Baroque art outside Italy. More than 30 works from the collection comprise the “Florentine Baroque: The Haukohl Collection” exhibit at Phoenix Art Museum, which opened in August. The show comes to Phoenix as part of a larger tour; it’s “traveled to 15 different university art museums before coming to Phoenix,” says Rachel Sadvary Zebro, Phoenix Art Museum associate curator of collections. “Education is important for us, and it’s the key thing of the Haukohl Philanthropies,” Haukohl says. “We try to identify underserved communities, communities where we can interface with a lot of students and also museums that do not have a large Italian Old Master painting collection.” In the Phoenix exhibit, most of the works are grouped by theme into three sections: Faith, Strength, and Courage; Sacred Beauty, Fierce Devotion; and Allegories, Gods, and Heroes. The first of these thematic groups includes works depicting Biblical stories, including Judith beheading Holofernes (from the apocryphal Book of Judith); God rebuking Cain for murdering his brother; Salome with the head of John the Baptist; and Mary with the infant Jesus (featured in more than one painting). The paintings are dense with symbolic imagery; the gallery’s placards provide helpful information to guide the viewer. The Sacred Beauty, Fierce Devotion group includes paintings of Catholic saints. These pieces, as the placards explain, continue the tradition in European art of depicting saints (often with their associated motifs) while evolving the subject by the inclusion of more focus on the saints’ humanity. Works in this group include Giovanni Battista Vanni’s painting “Saint John the Baptist in the Wilderness” (shown with a lamb and a palm-bearing cherub) and Jacopo Giorgi’s “Penitent Magdalene” (showing Mary Magdalene with motifs representing her presence at the Crucifixion of Christ and repentance) and two paintings of Saint Sebastian (both paintings featuring arrows to represent his martyrdom). The third thematic grouping of Allegories, Gods, and Heroes, comprises sculpture and painting depicting figures from Greco-Roman mythology as well as stock characters from the commedia dell’arte (a form of comic theater). Paintings by Ottavio Vannini, Felice Ficherell and Cesare Dandini depict person- ifications of meditation, poetry and musical respectively. Harlequin and Pierrot, clown- like characters from the commedia dell’arte, feature in paintings by Giovanni Domenico Ferretti and Narcisse Virgile Díaz de la Peña. One of the exhibit’s two statues depicts a wing-footed Mercury holding his caduceus. In addition to the paintings themselves, visitors should pay attention to the frames around the art. It has, Haukohl says, been a “very deliberate project” to find frames from the Florentine Baroque that best suit the paintings in the collection. “The goal is to find an original 17th-century Florentine frame, which is doable, but it takes years” Haukohl says. “A frame could come from Paris or London or New York or an antique shop. You just don’t know where you’re going to find something like that.” In some cases, when Haukohl couldn’t locate a satisfactory period frame, he had one commissioned. One such frame, now placed on Giovanni Domenico Ferretti’s “Harlequin and His Lady,” is an ornately textured, gold-colored piece with detailed cherubic figures in various postures. On display through July 26 and included with museum admission, “Florentine Baroque” is an exquisite collection that shouldn’t be missed. As Sadvary Zebro says, the show truly is “a window into what life would be like in Florence in the 17th century at the Medici court.” Onorio Marinari (1627-1715), “Saint Sebastian” Oil on canvas. (MNAHA, Tom Lucas) ▼ Arts & Culture
