Bernard Berenson

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Bernard Berenson
Berenson in 1905
Born
Bernhard Valvrojenski

(1865-06-26)June 26, 1865
Butrimonys, Vilna Governorate, Russian Empire
DiedOctober 6, 1959(1959-10-06) (aged 94)
Villa I Tatti, Florence, Italy
NationalityAmerican
EducationBoston University
Harvard University
OccupationArt historian
Known forThe Drawings of the Florentine Painters[1]
SpouseMary Berenson
RelativesSenda Berenson Abbott (sister)

Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an

the Renaissance. His book The Drawings of the Florentine Painters was an international success. His wife Mary is thought to have had a large hand in some of the writings.[2]

Berenson was a major figure in the attribution of Old Masters, at a time when these were attracting new interest by American collectors, and his judgments were widely respected in the art world.

Personal life

Berenson was born Bernhard Valvrojenski in

Boston, Massachusetts, in 1875, whereupon the family name was changed to "Berenson." Bernard converted to Christianity in 1885, becoming an Episcopalian.[4] Later, while living in Italy, he converted to Catholicism.[5][6][7]

After graduating from Boston Latin School, he attended the Boston University College of Liberal Arts as a freshman during 1883–84, but, unable to obtain instruction in Sanskrit from that institution, transferred to Harvard University for his sophomore year.[8] He graduated from Harvard and married Mary Smith, who became a notable art historian in her own right. Mary was the sister of Logan Pearsall Smith and of Alys Pearsall Smith, the first wife of Bertrand Russell. Mary had previously been married to barrister Frank Costelloe. Bernard Berenson was also involved in a long relationship with Belle da Costa Greene. Samuels (1987) mentions Mary's "reluctant acceptance (at times)" of this relationship.

Bernard Berenson in the garden of his estate Villa I Tatti in 1911
Autochrome portrait by Auguste Léon, 1917

Among his friends were American writer Ray Bradbury, who wrote about their friendship in The Wall Street Journal and in his book of essays, Yestermorrow; Natalie Barney, who lived in Florence during World War II, and also her partner, Romaine Brooks; and art collector Edward Perry Warren.[9] His circle of friends also included Isabella Stewart Gardner, Ralph Adams Cram, and George Santayana, the latter two having met each other through Bernard.[10]

September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City
.

Professional life

Among US collectors of the early 1900s, Berenson was regarded as the pre-eminent authority on Renaissance art. Early in his career, Berenson developed his own unique method of connoisseurship by combining the comparative examination techniques of Giovanni Morelli with the aesthetic idea put forth by John Addington Symonds that something of an artist's personality could be detected through his works of art.[11] While his approach remained controversial among European art historians and connoisseurs, he played a pivotal role as an advisor to several important American art collectors, such as Isabella Stewart Gardner, who needed help in navigating the complex and treacherous market of newly fashionable Renaissance art. Berenson's expertise eventually became so well regarded that his verdict of authorship could either increase or decrease a painting's value dramatically. In this respect Berenson's influence was enormous, while his 5% commission made him a wealthy man. (According to Charles Hope, he "had a financial interest in many works...an arrangement that Berenson chose to keep private."[12] )

Starting with his The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance with an Index to their Works (1894), his mix of connoisseurship and systematic approach proved successful. In 1895, his Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay on Constructive Art Criticism, won critical acclaim, notably from Heinrich Wölfflin. It was quickly followed by The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1896), lauded by William James for its innovative application of "elementary psychological categories to the interpretation of higher art".[citation needed]

In 1897, Berenson added another work to his series of guides, publishing The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance. After that, he devoted six years of work to The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, which was published in 1903.

In 1907, he published his The North Italian Painters of the Renaissance, where he expressed a judgement against

Modern Art. His early works were later integrated in his The Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1930), which was widely translated and reprinted. He also published two volumes of journals, "Rumor and Reflection" and "Sunset and Twilight". He is also the author of Aesthetics and History and Sketch for a Self-portrait.[citation needed
]

I Tatti

Careggi. However, Berenson's Florence apartment in the Borgo San Jacopo was destroyed, with some of its contents, during the German retreat from Florence.[13]

Through a secret agreement in 1912, Berenson enjoyed a close relationship with

Joseph Duveen, the period's most influential art dealer, who often relied heavily on Berenson's opinion to complete sales of works to prominent collectors who lacked knowledge of the field. Berenson was quiet and deliberating by nature, which sometimes caused friction between him and the boisterous Duveen. Their relationship ended on bad terms in 1937, following a dispute over a painting.[citation needed
]

In 1923, Berenson was called to give

La belle ferronnière and whose authorship is still debated. Duveen publicly rejected Hahn's Leonardo attribution of the painting, which he had never seen. Consequently, Hahn sued him. In 1923 Hahn's painting was brought to Paris to be compared with the Louvre version. Duveen mustered Berenson's and other experts' support for his opinion, dismissing Hahn's painting as a copy. At the trial in New York in 1929, where the expert witnesses did not appear, the jury was not convinced by Berenson's Paris testimony, in part because, while under cross-examination there, he had been unable to recall the medium upon which the picture was painted. It was also revealed that Berenson, as well as other experts who had testified in Paris, such as Roger Fry and Sir Charles Holmes, had previously provided paid expertise to Duveen. While Duveen, after a split verdict, ended up settling out of court with Hahn, the whole story damaged Berenson's reputation. [citation needed
]

Berenson was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1958.[14] He died at age 94 in Settignano, Italy.

The Allendale Nativity, which Berenson attributed to Titian.

Recent scholarship has established that Berenson's secret agreements with Duveen resulted in substantial profits to himself, as much as 25% of the proceeds, making him a wealthy man. This clear conflict of interest has thrown into doubt many of his authentications for Duveen and a number of these have been shown, through careful examination, to have become more optimistic, therefore considerably more valuable, once he was working for Duveen. No systematic comparison has, as yet, been done, but a partial study of seventy works points to this possibility. (Meryle Secrest, "Being Bernard Berenson", 1979, Appendix, p. 399) The issue is still controversial.

In addition to his better-known collection of Italian Renaissance paintings and objects, Berenson also demonstrated a keen interest in Asian art, including a distinguished collection of Arab and Persian painting.[15]

The Berenson Library (the Biblioteca Berenson) has grown since Berenson gifted his extensive collection of books and photographs to Harvard and now holds an archive of around 250,000 photographic prints and other related materials.

The Courtauld Institute of Art in London.[17]
Both collections are in the process of being digitised.

Correspondence

2006 saw the publication of the noted British historian

Hugh Trevor-Roper's letters to Berenson in the period 1947–60, in a book entitled, Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson, edited by Richard Davenport-Hines
, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

In 2015, Yale University Press published Kenneth Clark's correspondence with Berenson in the book, My Dear BB: The Letters of Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark, 1925–1959, edited and annotated by Robert Cumming.

Nine years worth of correspondence (1950–1959) between Berenson and San Diego-based Norah Bisgood Woodward is held by the Special Collections and Archives at the UC San Diego Library.[18]

Berenson and Ernest Hemingway kept an eight-year-long correspondence from 1949 until 1957, published in Jobst C. Knigge: Ernest Hemingway and Bernard Berenson. A Strange Friendship, Humboldt University (open access), Berlin 2019.

Works

  • Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (1894)
  • Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism (1895); Berenson, Bernard (1901). Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism (2nd revised with additional illustrations ed.).[19] (See Lorenzo Lotto.)
  • Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1896)
  • Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1897)
  • The Sense of Quality: Study and Criticism of Italian Art (1901; second series, 1902)
  • The Drawings of the Florentine Painters (1903, revised in 1938 and 1961)[20][21]
  • North Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1907)
  • A Sienese Painter of the Franciscan Legend (1910)
  • Venetian Painting in America: The Fifteenth Century (New York, 1916)
  • Essays in the Study of Sienese Painting (New York, 1918)
  • Aesthetics and History in the Visual Arts (Estetica, Etica e Storia nelle Arti della Rappresentazione Visiva) (1948)
  • The Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1952)
  • Rumor and Reflection (New York, 1952)
  • Caravaggio: His Incongruity and His Fame (1953)
  • Seeing and Knowing, New York Graphic Society, Ltd. (1953)
  • Piero della Francesca or The Ineloquent in Art, The Macmillan Company (New York, 1954)
  • The Passionate Sightseer: from the diaries 1947 to 1956 (New York, 1960)
  • Sunset and Twilight (New York, 1963)

Most of his books were published in the United States and went through many editions.

References

  1. ^ Klic, Lukas; Miller, Matt; Nelson, Jonathan K.; Pattuelli, Cristina; Provo, Alexandra (October 18, 2017). "The Drawings of the Florentine Painters: From Print Catalog to Linked Open Data". Code4Lib Journal (38). Retrieved June 13, 2018.
  2. ^ "Mary Berenson". Dictionary of Art Historians. Archived from the original on May 13, 2019. Retrieved March 28, 2016.
  3. ISBN 978-1558495685
    .
  4. ^ "Dictionary of Art Historians - Bernard Berenson; Bernhard Berenson". arthistorians.info. Archived from the original on October 14, 2020. Retrieved March 23, 2018.
  5. ^ Russell, John (November 4, 1979). "Devotee Of Beauty; Berenson". The New York Times.
  6. ^ Clurman, Harold (May 20, 1979). "Berenson's path to Parnassus". Archived from the original on July 24, 2012. Retrieved July 5, 2017.
  7. ^ "The heiress and the art critic". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 28, 2012.
  8. ^ Boston University College of Liberal Arts Class of 1887 50th Anniversary Memory Book, published 1937
  9. ^ Green, Martin Burgess (1989). The Mount Vernon Street Warrens: A Boston Story, 1860–1910. Charles Scribner's Sons. Retrieved January 4, 2018.
  10. ISBN 978-1558495685
    .
  11. S2CID 185172171
    .
  12. ^ Hope, Charles. "The Art of the Phony". New York Review of Books. Retrieved August 4, 2013. {{cite magazine}}: Cite magazine requires |magazine= (help)
  13. ^ WORKS OF ART IN ITALY, losses and survival, London 1945 compiled from War Office Reports of the British Committee on the Preservation and Restitution of Works of Art, Archives and Other Material in Enemy Hands, in Engramma n. 61 (freely available online)
  14. ^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 15, 2011.
  15. ^ Gauvin Alexander Bailey, ‘The Bernard Berenson Collection of Islamic Painting at Villa I Tatti: Mamluk, Ilkhanid, and Early Timurid Miniatures,’ Oriental Art XLVII, 4 (September 2001): 53–62‘The Bernard Berenson Collection of Islamic Painting at Villa I Tatti: Turkman, Uzbek, and Safavid Miniatures,’ Oriental Art XLVIII, 1 (February 2002): 2–16
  16. ^ "Villa I Tatti - The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies | PHAROS: The International Consortium of Photo Archives". pharosartresearch.org. Retrieved July 31, 2022.
  17. ^ Digitisation, Courtauld (June 30, 2020). "Who made the Conway Library?". Digital Media. Retrieved July 31, 2022.
  18. ^ "Register of Bernard Berenson Correspondence - MSS 694". libraries.ucsd.edu. Retrieved June 10, 2015.
  19. ^ "Review of Lorenzo Lotto by Bernard Berenson, revised edition". The Athenaeum (3938): 503–504. April 18, 1903.
  20. JSTOR 40480363
    .
  21. ^ The Drawings of the Florentine Painters by Bernard Berenson: An Online Catalogue (April 3, 2017).

Further reading

  • Patricia Luce Chapman: To Bernard Berenson with Love (2005).
  • S.N. Behrman: Duveen (1951, 1952).
  • Kenneth Clark: Another Part of the Wood (1974).
  • Rachel Cohen: Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade (2013).
  • Joseph Connors, Louis Waldman, eds.: Bernard Berenson Formation and Heritage (2014).
  • Mary Ann Calo: Bernard Berenson and the Twentieth Century (1994).
  • Simon Gray: The Old Masters A play in which Berenson is a leading character. (2004).
  • John Pope-Hennessy
    "Bernard Berenson" in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 34 (1988).
  • Ernest Samuels: Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur (1979).
  • Ernest Samuels: Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Legend (1987).
  • Cynthia Saltzman: Old Masters, New World: America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures (2008).
  • Meryle Secrest: Being Bernard Berenson: A Biography. Holt, Rinehart & Winston (1979), Weidenfeld & Nicolson (1980).
  • Colin Simpson: Artful Partners: Bernard Berenson and Joseph Duveen (1986).
  • Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls (eds.): The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti, Florence-Milan: Villa I Tatti in collaboration with Officina Libraria, 2015.
  • William Weaver: A Legacy of Excellence: The Story of Villa I Tatti (1997).

External links

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