Berenson, Bernard (bĕr`ənsən), 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

(born June 26, 1865, Vilnius, Lithuania, Russian Empire—died Oct. 6, 1959, Settignano, Italy) Lithuanian-born U.S. art historian, critic, and connoisseur. He grew up in Boston and attended Harvard University, but for most of his life he lived in Italy, where he built a reputation as an authority on Italian Renaissance painting. He was adviser to the art dealer Joseph Duveen (1869–1939) and to Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924), founder of Boston's Gardner Museum. Berenson bequeathed his villa, I Tatti (near Florence), with its art collection and outstanding library, to Harvard to be administered as the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. His books include The Drawings of the Florentine Painters (1903, 1938, 1961) and Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1952).

Berenson, Bernard (b. Valvrojenski) (1865–1959) art historian, connoisseur, collector; born in Biturmansk, Lithuania. He studied at the local synagogue before his family emigrated to Boston (1875), where he studied at Boston University (1883) and Harvard (B.A. 1887). Subsidized by Isabella Stewart Gardner, he studied in Paris, London, Oxford, Berlin, and Italy (1887–88). He settled in an 18th-century Villa I Tatti near Florence and devoted himself to the study and identification of medieval and Renaissance works, specializing in Italian art. An honored scholar and authenticator, he acquired prints and paintings for museums and private collectors, such as Isabella Gardner, and for international dealers, thereby making himself wealthy, and attracting criticism from some quarters for placing his connoisseurship at the service of profit-makers. In addition to the many distinguished critical essays and scholarly works, notably The Study and Criticism of Italian Art (1902) and Drawings of the Florentine Painters (1903), he published a three-volume autobiography (1949–52). He became famous for his ability to attribute paintings to artists based on specific characteristics of style and technique—even to the point of identifying hitherto unknown painters. At his death, the Villa I Tatti was left to Harvard University as a center for Italian Renaissance studies.