Coup as Caravaggio's art comes to town from the Corsini family collection

Madonna and Child with Six Angels (circa 1500), Sandro Botticelli and workshop, is one of the oldest works to visit New Zealand.

How did Mary Kisler persuade the Corsini family, one of Florence's most eminent and long-established, to let art from its famed collection leave Italy for the first time?

Simple. The Auckand Art Gallery's senior curator of the Mackelvie collection and international art asked.

In a meeting with Mondo Mostre, an Italian-based company that organises art exhibitions around the world, Kisler quipped that she would love to hold an exhibition of Renaissance art in Auckland. She can't recall one having been done before.

A few months later, during a trip to France where she was researching New Zealand painter Frances Hodgkins, Kisler received an invitation to meet the Corsini family and art historian/curator Dr Ludovica Sebregondi in Florence.

A Harvard Fellowship at Villa I Tatti followed, giving Kisler the chance to start to plan The Corsini Collection: A Window on Renaissance Florence exhibition. The family told her she could take what she wanted to Auckland. Kisler knew logistics, freight and costs would influence those decisions.

But she knew she wanted to bring to Auckland - indeed New Zealand - for the first time, work by Botticelli and Caravaggio. She got that wish and, with Sebregondi, has assembled an exhibition featuring art and objects - there's even a display of a dining setting used by the Corsini family - which tells the story of one family's passion for art as well as their hometown, Florence.

"It's like travelling to Italy without having to pay the airfare," says Kisler, who has organised the exhibition into eight rooms.

Given this, here are eight facts worth knowing about The Corsini Collection and the family behind it:

1. The Corsini family settled in Florence in the 1300s and took up leading roles in government, law, banking and trade. From 1650-1728, the family constructed Palazzo Corsini, which now houses Galleria Corsini.

2. Illustrious ancestors include their family saint, Andrea Corsini, three cardinals and Pope Clement XII, who oversaw the building of the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

3. Madonna and Child with Six Angels (circa 1500), by Sandro Botticelli and his workshop, is one of the oldest works to visit New Zealand. Paintings with religious themes acted as moral markers of a life well-lived. The Madonna was the figure you prayed to when in need.

4. As a newfound interest developed in rediscovered Roman and Greek literature, heroes and heroines from Rome and Greece were adopted as symbols of the city and its citizens and began to appear more often in art.

5. In 1621, artist Matteo Rosselli was commissioned to paint a Triumph of David and the sketch for that painting, crackling with life and energy, travels to Auckland.

6. Aristocratic families, such as the Corsinis, often made alliances through marriage and art sometimes came into their possession as part of a bride's dowry. It is thought Caravaggio's Portrait of Pope Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini) could be an example of this.

7. The portrait of Amerigo Corsini, son of Prince Tommaso Corsini and Pisan heiress Luisa Scotto, is a reminder that even in 1852, when it is thought to have been painted, life could be cruel. Amerigo went to Paris to meet his bride-to-be, returning to Italy to set his wedding date. It should have been a joyous time but he fell ill and died, aged only 18. His mother dedicated her life to preserving his memory. His watercolours are included in an album displayed in the exhibition.

8. In World War II, Princess Elena Corsini and her devoted servants saved the collection from confiscation by secreting away large paintings in the countryside and Palazzo Corsini. Smaller works were stored in a crypt beneath the Brancacci Chapel.

The exhibition ends with a touch of Italy in Auckland, showing the artworks, mainly from the 16th and 17th centuries which have a permanent place in our art gallery's collection.

Lowdown
What: The Corsini Collection: A Window on Renaissance Florence
Where and when: Auckland Art Gallery, September 2-January 21