biography
| name: |
Berenson, Bernard or Bernhard
|
| |
originally Bernard Valvrojenski
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pronunciation:
[berenson]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1865–1959)
|
| biography:
| Art historian, connoisseur, and collector, born in Vilnius, Lithuania. He studied at the local synagogue before his family emigrated to Boston (1875), where he studied at Boston University (1883) and Harvard (1887 BA). Subsidized by Isabella Stewart Gardner, he studied in Paris, London, Oxford, Berlin, and Italy (1887–8). He settled in the 18th-c Villa I Tatti near Florence and devoted himself to the study and identification of mediaeval and Renaissance works, specializing in Italian art. An honoured 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. He wrote many critical essays and scholarly works, notably The Study and Criticism of Italian Art (1902) and Drawings of the Florentine Painters (1938), and 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 identifying hitherto unknown painters. At his death, the Villa I Tatti was left to Harvard University as a centre for Italian Renaissance studies. |
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