Bernard Berenson : : The Making of a Legend / / Ernest Samuels.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter HUP e-dition: Art & Architecture eBook Package
• VerfasserIn: Samuels, Ernest,
• TeilnehmendeR: Samuels, Jayne Newcomer.
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2013]; ©1987
• Year of Publication: 2013
• Edition: Reprint 2014
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (680 p.)

Controversy swirls around Bernard Berenson today as it did in his middle years, before and between two world wars. Who was this man, this supreme connoisseur of Italian Renaissance painting? How did he support his elegant estate near Florence, his Villa I Tatti? What exactly were his relations with the art dealer Joseph Duveen? What part did his wife, Mary, play in his scholarly work and professional career? The answers are to be found in the day-to-day record of his life as he lived it--as reported at first hand in his and Mary's letters and diaries and reflected in the countless personal and business letters they received. His is one of the most fully documented lives of this century. Ernest Samuels, having spent twenty years studying the thousands of letters and other manuscripts, presents his story in absorbing detail. Berenson helped Isabella Stewart Gardner build her great collection and performed similar though lesser services for other wealthy Americans. It was merely an avocation and a useful source of income; his vocation was scholarship. But after 1904, when the book opens, his expertise was in ever-greater demand: a purchaser's only assurance of the authorship of an Italian painting was the opinion of an expert, and in this field Berenson was pre-eminent. Increasingly he was drawn into the lucrative world of the art dealers; inevitably Joseph Duveen found it essential to enlist his services, at first ad hoc, then by contractual agreement. Samuels charts the course of Berenson's long association with Duveen Brothers, detailing the financial arrangements, the humdrum chores and major contested attributions, the periodic clashes between the stubborn scholar and the arrogant entrepreneur. The portrayal of Berenson's relationship with Mary is especially intriguing: a union of opposites in all but brains and wit, bonded--despite love affairs, jealousies, recriminations--no longer by passion but by shared concerns. Impinging on their lives are those of a huge circle of friends and acquaintances in America and the beau monde of Europe. Both as biography and as a chapter of social and cultural history, it is a compelling book.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Prologue -- I. The Missionaries’ Return -- II. A Man of the World -- III. Throes of the North Italians -- IV. Pathway to Dwveen -- V. The “Fourth Gospel” -- VI. A Home in Exile -- VII. Matisse and the Highroad of Art -- VIII. America the Plutocratic -- IX. The Pursuit of Life Enhancement -- X. The Red Robe -- XI. The Ixion Wheel of Business -- XII. Idyll with Belle da Costa Greene -- XIII. A Marital Truce -- ΧIV. “The Flavor of Dust and Ashes” -- XV. The “Merchants” and the “Expert” -- ΧVI. Last Season of the Belle Epoque -- XVII. America Revisited -- XVIII. The Darkening of Europe -- XIX. A Time for Writing -- XX. Paris in Wartime -- XXI. Venetians Restudied and Leonardo Dethroned -- XXII. From Art Expert to Military Adviser -- XXIII. Domestic Crisis -- XXIV. “The Dragon’s Eggs” -- XXV. Spoils of War and Art -- XXVI. An “American Bacchus” -- XXVII. An Island of Relative Solitude -- XXVIII. Suspect in the Tromised Land -- XXX. Germany and the Stelloni d’Italia -- XXXI. The Case of La Belle Ferronière -- XXXII. The Archaeology of Art -- XXXIII. On the Way toTruth -- XXXIV. The “Two Sposini” -- XXXV. The End of Profit Sharing -- XXXVI. Afloat on a Golden Flood -- XXXVII. “Prince of Art Critics” -- XXXVIII. A New Disciple -- XXXIX. The “Book of Revelation” -- XL. The Role of Art History -- XLI. Life in “Mussolinia” -- XLII. The Allendale Nativity -- XLIII. The Drawings Revisited -- XLIV. Toward the Abyss -- XLV. Travels into Self -- XLVI. The Peace of Le Fontanelle -- XLVII. Patriarch of Florence -- XLVIII. At Home in the House of Life -- XLIΧ. Paradoxical Talmudist -- L. Master of the Inn -- LI. Garnering the Past -- LII. “The Last Aesthete” -- LIII. Doctor of Letters and Philosophy -- LIV. Toward a “Humanistic Priesthood” -- LV. “A Scene from Rembrandt” -- SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY. NOTES. INDEX -- Selected bibliography -- Notes -- Index