Bernard Berenson

Bernard Berenson , 1865-1959, American art critic and connoisseur of Italian art, b. Lithuania, grad. Harvard, 1887. An expert and an arbiter of taste, he selected for art collectors innumerable paintings, many of which are now in museums. A testament to his taste may be seen in the Gardner Museum in Boston. He was associated for many years with the British art dealer Lord Duveen as chief art adviser. Berenson settled (c.1900) in Settignano, near Florence, Italy, where he built up a fine art collection and library. He was noted as a brilliant conversationalist and wit. His home, I Tatti, became a mecca for European and American intellectuals and was willed to Harvard. Some of Berenson's early publications are still used in the study of art history, though later scholars have criticized many of his judgments. Among his many writings are Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (1894), Lorenzo Lotto (1895), Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1896), Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1897), Drawings of the Florentine Painters (1903), North Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1907), Sketch for a Self-Portrait (1949), Rumor and Reflection (1952), The Passionate Sightseer (1960), Sunset and Twilight … Diaries 1947-1958, ed. by Nicky Mariano (1963), and Italian Pictures of the Renaissance (repr. 1972).

Bibliography: See biographies by S. Sprigge (1960), N. Mariano (1966), M. Secrest (1979), and E. Samuels (2 vol., 1979-87).

Berenson, Bernard (b Butremancz, 26 June 1865; d Settignano, 6 Oct. 1959). American art historian, critic, and connoisseur. He was born in Lithuania and educated in Boston and at Harvard University (his family emigrated to the USA when he was 10), but he spent most of his long life in Italy, first visiting the country in 1888 and settling there permanently in 1899. He built up a formidable reputation as an authority on Italian Renaissance painting and was associated with several prominent dealers and collectors, notably Lord Duveen and Isabella Stewart Gardner, advising them on purchases. The fortune he earned in the picture trade has caused his impartiality to be questioned, and many of his attributions have been downgraded, but his lists of the work of Renaissance painters formed a basis for further work for many years. His most enduring work of scholarship is The Drawings of the Florentine Painters (1903, 2nd edn. 1938, 3rd edn.—in Italian—1961). He amassed a huge library of books and photographs and an impressive art collection at his villa, I Tatti, at Settignano, near Florence, which he left to Harvard University. In 1961 it opened as the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Dapper and polylingual, Berenson often played host to visiting art historians and intellectuals at I Tatti and was a renowned conversationalist, diarist, and bon viveur. See also tactile values.