18 museomag   04 ‘ 2020 
The exhibition on the Haukohl family collection lends 
an excellent opportunity to display a handful of Floren- 
tine baroque paintings from the MNHA collection. 
Of these, the large Banquet of Cleopatra and Mark 
Antony is an early masterpiece by one of the prota- 
gonists of the exhibition: Pietro or ‘Pier’ Dandini 
(1646-1712). It illustrates the episode recounted by Pliny 
the Elder in his Naturalis Historia (IX, 58) of the magni- 
ficent banquet where Cleopatra dissolved a pearl of 
immense value in vinegar to outdo Mark Antony in 
grandeur. The Banquet was probably commissioned 
by Marco Alessandro del Borro (1626-1701), a military 
general and elected governor of Livorno, as part of a 
group of works dedicated to exemplary military leaders 
from antiquity: Alexander the Great, Mark Antony and 
Scipio Africanus. Like his Florentine contemporaries, 
Dandini based the painting on “disegno”: a drawing 
or preliminary study. A preparatory study for it is 
known to exist in a private Florentine collection, but 
has hitherto not been published. However, a wonderful 
Study for a Corsini Ceiling in the Haukohl collection, 
the only drawing shown in the exhibition, does give us 
an idea of Dandini’s draughtsmanship. The scale, com- 
position and subject matter taken from ancient history, 
make the MNHA Banquet an ideal companion for the 
Haukohl collections fine Esther Before Ahasuerus, also 
by Pier Dandini. It shows an episode from the story 
of Esther, the young Hebrew wife of the Persian king 
Ahasueres. She swoons in the arms of her maid- 
servants, after having fastened for three days, implo- 
ring her husband to help the Jews escape a massacre 
planned by the king’s minister. The baroque melodra- 
ma pervades throughout the painting. Much more 
so than in, for instance, the work of Ottavio Vannini 
Pietro Dandini (1646-1712), Banquet of Cleopatra and Mark Antony, c. 1678. Oil on canvas, 92.5 x 213.5 cm / Collection MNHA 
A TELLING CONTEXT 
FLORENTINE BAROQUE PAINTINGS FROM THE MNHA COLLECTION 
IN THE HAUKOHL EXHIBITION – FROM 16 OCTOBER 2020 TO 21 FEBRUARY 2021