Abbadia d'Ombrone

Abbazia di Vallombrosa

Villa Arceno

Bardini Garden in Florence

Bernard Berenson

Boboli's Gardens

Il parco dei Mostri di Bomarzo

Villa Bottini

Castello di Brolio

Villa Cahen

Villa della Capponcina

Villa Capponi

Villa Medici at Careggi

Villa di Catignano

Cecil Ross Pinsent

Castello di Celsa

Villa Certano Baldassarrini

Certosa di Pontignano

Villa di Cetinale

Villa Chigi Saracini

Villa Farnese (Caprarola)

Gardens in Fiesole

Villa Gamberaia

Villa Garzoni in Collodi

Villa di Geggiano

Villa Grabau

Villa Guicciardini Corsi Salviati

Horti Leonini di San Quirico

Villa I Collazzi, Firenze

Iris Origo

L'Orto de'Pecci (Siena)


Villa I Tatti

Villa Medicea La Ferdinanda

Villa La Foce

Villa La Gallina in Arcetri

Villa Lante

Villa La Petraia

Villa La Pietra

Villa La Suverana in Casole d'Elsa

The Medici Villa at Careggi

Villa Medici in Fiesole, Firenze

Garden of Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Firenze

Villa Medicea at Poggio a Caiano

Medici Villas in Tuscany

Villa di Monaciano

Giardino degli Orti Oricellari | Firenze

Orto Botanico, Siena

Villa Orlandini in Poggio Torselli

Il Palazzone

Villa Palmieri and Villa Schifanoiai

Villa Peyron al Bosco di Fontelucente

Palazzo Piccolomini in Pienza

Villa di Pratolino

Villa Reale di Marlia

Villa San Donato in Colle (Bagno a Ripoli)

Villa Santini Torrigiani

Villa di Vicobello

Villa Vistarenni

Il Vittoriale degli Italiani


 
Gardens in Tuscany
             
 
Bernard Berenson in the garden at Villa i Tatti, March 1911


 

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Bernard Berenson


   
   

Bernard Berenson (June 26, 1865 – October 6, 1959) was an American art historian specializing in the Renaissance. He was a major figure in pioneering art attribution and therefore establishing the market for paintings by the "Old Masters".

Berenson was born Bernhard Valvrojenski in Butrimonys (now in Alytus district of Lithuania) to a Jewish family. They emigrated to Boston, Massachusetts from the Vilna Governorate of the Russian Empire in 1875, whereupon the family name was changed to "Berenson." The family was thought to be related to Isaac Abrabanel.[citation needed]
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.[1] 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.
Among his more surprising friendships was a long one with the American writer Ray Bradbury, who wrote about their friendship in The Wall Street Journal and in his book of essays, Yestermorrow. He was also a close friend and admirer of Natalie Barney.[citation needed]
His great-great-niece, Marisa Berenson, is an actress. Her sister, Berry Berenson, was an actress/photographer, and the wife of actor Anthony Perkins. Berry died in the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City.

Among US collectors of the early 1900s, Berenson was regarded as the pre-eminent authority on Renaissance art. His verdict of authenticity increased a painting's value. 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. In this respect Berenson's influence was enormous, while his 5% commission made him a wealthy man. Starting with his The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance with an Index to their Works (1894), his mix of connoisseurship and systematic approach proved immensely successful. In 1895 his Lorenzo Lotto, an Essay on Constructive Art Criticism won wide critical acclaim, notably by Heinrich Wölfflin. It was quickly followed by The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance (1896), that was lauded by William James for its innovative application of "elementary psychological categories to the interpretation of higher art". In 1897 Berenson added another work to his series of scholarly yet handy guides publishing The Central Italian Painters of the Renaissance. After that he devoted six years of pioneering work to what is widely regarded as his deepest and most substantial book, 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 devastating and still controversial judgement of Mannerist art, which may be related to his love for Classicism and his professed distaste for Modern Art. His early works were later integrated in his most famous book, 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. His beautiful residence in Settignano near Florence, which has been called 'I Tatti' since at least the 17th century, is now the Harvard Center for Renaissance Studies. It houses his art collection and his personal library of books on art history and humanism, which Berenson regarded as his most enduring legacy. A spirited portrait of daily life at the Berenson "court" at I Tatti during the 1920s may be found in Sir Kenneth Clark's 1974 memoir, Another Part of the Wood. 'During WW2, barely tolerated by the Fascist authorities and, later on, by their German masters, Berenson remained at "I Tatti". When the frontline reached it at the end of the summer of 1944 he wrote in his diary, "Our hillside happens to lie between the principal line of German retreat along the Via Bolognese and a side road...We are at the heart of the German rearguard action, and seriously exposed.". Remarkably, under his supervision the villa remained unharmed. Also unharmed was the bulk of his collections, which had been moved to a villa at Careggi. However, Berenson's Florence apartment in the Borgo San Jacopo was destroyed with some of its precious contents during the German retreat from Florence . Another memoir with personal reminiscences and photographs of Berenson's life in Italy before and after the war is Kinta Beevor's "A Tuscan Childhood" [New York: Vintage Books, 2000; c.1993].

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 after a dispute over a painting, the Allendale Nativity (a.k.a. the Adoration of the Shepherds now at the National Gallery in Washington), intended for the collection of Samuel H. Kress. Duveen was selling it as a Giorgione, but Berenson believed it to be an early Titian. The painting is now widely considered to be a Giorgione. Beside assisting Duveen, Berenson also consulted for other important art dealerships, such as London's Colnaghi and, after his breakup with Duveen, New York's Wildenstein.

In 1923, Berenson was called to give expert witness in a famous case brought by Andrée Hahn against Duveen. In 1920 Hahn wanted to sell a painting[3] that she believed to be a version of Leonardo's 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 on 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 expertises to Duveen. While Duveen, after a split verdict, ended up settling out of court with Hahn, the whole story damaged Berenson's reputation.

Berenson died at age 94 in Settignano, Italy.

As Renaissance scholarship has evolved, a number of Berenson's attributions are now believed to be incorrect. There is also ongoing speculation as to whether some of these misattributions were deliberate, since Berenson often had a considerable financial stake in the matter. Due to the strong subjective element in connoisseurship, such accusations remain hard to either disprove or substantiate.

Villa i Tatti in Settignano, The Villa seen from the bottom of the Italian Garden

 

Works

* Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (1894)
* Lorenzo Lotto: An Essay in Constructive Art Criticism (1895)
* 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), his masterpiece[citation needed]
* 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)
* The Italian Painters Of The Renaissance (1952)London & New York Phaidon Publishers Inc.
* Rumor and Reflection (New York, 1952)
* Seeing and Knowing New York Graphic Society, Ltd., (1953)
* The Passionate Sightseer (New York, 1960)
* Sunset and Twilight (New York, 1963)

   
   
 
   



The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti
a cura di Carl Brandon Strehlke con  Machtelt Brüggen Israëls, 804 pp., 180 ill. a colori 40 b/n, Officina Libraria, Milano 2015

Gardens in Tuscany | Villa i Tatti in Settignano

Dictionary of Art Historians
| Bernard Berenson

Villa I Tatti | The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies | www.itatti.it

   
[1]Bernard Berenson and his wife Mary bought Villa I Tatti in 1905. In 1909 they commissioned the English architect Cecil Ross Pinsent (1884–1963) to supervise a series of extensions and alterations to Villa I Tatti, as well as to design a garden and supervise its planting and construction with the help of the English writer-scholar Geoffrey Scott (1884 – 1929).

The surviving documentation suggests that, while Pinsent was certainly the maitre d’oeuvre for this job, he had to contend with patrons who had some very clear ideas about what they wanted their garden to look like. Both Mary Berenson and Bernard did not fail to ask their architect for some very substantial modifications to his original project, which intervention was all the more understandable as this was Pinsent’s first major commission. These modifications were often motivated, quite simply, by a wish to curtail expenses (as happened with the proposal for an elaborate staircase from the limonaia to the Italian garden), but in other cases they were motivated by more stylistic considerations.
Work on the garden of Villa I Tatti began in 1909 with the construction of a little house at the bottom of the property to house the head gardener, and a large cistern sunk into the ground at the very top of the garden to provide a more adequate water supply for the planned plantings. This cistern, fed by spring water that still ensures the water necessary for the garden, was above all destined to keep the Berensons’ "English lawns" flourishing in a climate that was hardly favourable to such a luxury. The next two years saw much activity in the garden and, by March 1911, Cecil Pinsent enthusiastically wrote to Mary Berenson: "The garden is going merrily and really is going to look well. All the muratore work (masonry) is about half done – laghetti (ponds), steps, paving + the plastering of the rustic wall. We are getting quite excited about it."

In the Spring and Summer of 1912 the intricate pebble mosaics (still much admired) were completed on the landings of the staircase of the Italian garden and in various other parts of the garden. The following year saw slow but steady progress, including the planting of hedges to delimit the central walk in the new cypress allée and the installation of a monumental stone bench around the lowest level of the Italian garden. Work in the garden continued well into 1914, although it was to come to a halt in late August due to the beginning of the First World War. Fears of a conflict that would involve all of the peninsula, combined with apprehensions with respect to possible difficulties in transferring funds, stopped most of the building activity at that point in time. When work was resumed some years later the garden was finally brought to completion, with only some small modifications that did not significantly alter the construction and plantings that had been accomplished before the war.

Villa I Tatti, a Medici residence situated between Fiesole and Settignano in the north of Florence has been the headquarters of the Center for Italian Renaissance Studies at Harvard University since 1961.

Villa I Tatti | The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies | www.itatti.it

Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies
Via di Vincigliata 26
50135 Florence, Italy

tel: +39 055 603 251

 

 

Bernard Berenson, age 90, at the Borghese Gardens in Rome

This page uses material from the Wikipedia article Bernard Berenson, published under the GNU Free Documentation License.

 


 
 

Pienza
 
Podere Santa Pia, view from the garden
on the valley below

 
San Quirico d'Orcia


Villa is Tuscany


Artist and Writer's Residency | Podere Santa Pia

 

       

Podere Santa Pia, morning view

 

         
Tuscany | Gardens in Tuscany