For the first half of the twentieth century Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) was arguably the most influential art historian in the anglophone world. His was not, however, a name associated with Byzantine Art. His status derived from his knowledge of the Italian Renaissance and his willingness to use that expertise to steer collectors toward desirable purchases. An advisor to Isabella Stewart Gardner between 1894 and 1903, he guided her acquisition of over 40 paintings. From 1906, when he entered into a clandestine business collaboration with the London art dealer Joseph Duveen, he profited handily by advising such notable American collectors as John D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan, Andrew Mellon, Henry Clay Frick, and Samuel H. Kress. Through this activity Berenson not only shaped American private collections, but also the museums that grew out of them. His work helped to cement the idea of the Italian Renaissance as the premier art historical tradition in public imagination, a status secured and supported by his numerous publications, among them The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance (1894), Lorenzo Lotto (1895), The Florentine Painters (1896), and The Central Italian Painters (1897). That legacy was given institutional form through Berenson’s bequest of I Tatti, his villa in the hills above Florence, to Harvard University with the understanding that it would become a center for the study of Renaissance art after his death.
Yet Berenson’s interests went beyond the art of the Renaissance. His personal collection not only included works of Italian painters, but also examples of Asian art. He had, as well, a simmering interest in things Byzantine. That interest emerged around 1920 and was doubtless an offshoot of his study of Renaissance painting. Fired in all likelihood by the twin sparks of Giorgio Vasari’s claim in the preface to the Lives of the Artists that it was the Greeks who taught the Italians to paint at the end of the middle ages, and his encounters with the early Italian paintings that appeared on the art market in the years leading up to and following World War I, Berenson’s engagement with Byzantium remained with him for the rest of his life. Gabriella Bernardi’s volume aims to track this interest. To that end, she presents 254 previously unpublished letters, together with six background essays, among them contributions by Massimo Bernabò and Spyros Koulouris. Photographs and biographical profiles make up the remaining three chapters. An appendix reproduces Berenson’s publications.
Bernabò’s preface, “Berenson on Byzantine Art,” examines his three publications on the subject, an article that appeared in the fall of 1920 attributing a recently discovered triptych to Cimabue, a study of the paintings now known as the Kahn and Mellon Madonnas from 1921, and an opinion piece on the Venetian Basilica of San Marco written in 1954. [1] The following five chapters aim to set the stage for the letters. Chapter 1, “Introduction,” describes the book’s aims and methodology. Chapter 2, “A Short Biography,” sketches Berenson’s life. Chapter 3, “Bernard Berenson’s Byzantine Vision,” examines Berenson’s conception of Byzantine art. Chapter 4, “Bernard Berenson, Thomas Whittemore, and San Marco in Venice,” addresses his interest in the post-war restorations of the Venetian church. Chapter 5, “Capturing the Byzantine World,” by Spyros Koulouris, outlines Berenson’s acquisition of photographs.
Chapter 6 reproduces the correspondence. Selected largely from the archives at Harvard and I Tatti, now the Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, materials cover the period between 1920 and 1957 and appear in two sections. The first includes exchanges between Berenson and his correspondents; the second, letters for which Berenson’s replies do not survive. Both sections organize material by correspondent. Reciprocal correspondents in section one include the American art historians Arthur Kingsley Porter, Edward Forbes, and Paul Sachs, all Harvard men. Porter was a historian of medieval architecture. Forbes and Sachs were also on the faculty and at different moments directors of the Fogg Museum. Letters between Berenson and Robert Woods Bliss, who, together with his wife Mildred, left his library, collections, and residence to Harvard to create the institute for Byzantine studies that is now Dumbarton Oaks, are also included, as are exchanges with some of his Italian colleagues, the art historians Sergio Bettini and Ranuccio Bianchi Bandinelli among them. Other correspondents include Paul Karageorgevič, Prince of Yugoslavia, and the German art historian Wolfgang Fritz Volbach. With the exception of a series of letters from the art historian Pietro Toesca with whom he was on intimate terms, letters in Section 2 are largely professional in tenor and often read as perfunctory responses to Berenson’s requests for photographs. They include such correspondents as the American archaeologists Rhys Carpenter and Alison Franz and the Greek philanthropist Antonis Benakis.
The remaining chapters provide supporting materials. Chapter 7 reproduces 34 black and white photographs of images referred to in the letters. Chapter 8 provides biographical profiles of correspondents and others mentioned in the text. Chapter 9 includes pictures of some of the correspondents. An appendix reproduces Berenson’s three publications on Byzantine art, beginning with an English language translation of his San Marco piece. Copies of the articles on painting follow.
It is difficult to know how to assess this volume. On the one hand, there is a lot of information. On the other hand, that information does not necessarily coalesce into a clear picture of Berenson’s approach to Byzantium, which, frankly, seems un-exceptional. In part the difficulty may lie in content and organization. The introductory essays do not necessarily engage the letters, and while the choice to arrange the correspondence by author makes sense, it comes at the cost of chronology, making it difficult to follow Berenson’s engagement with the subject across time. It must also be said that the letters themselves are not overtly revelatory. By turns intimate and professional, they circle around a handful of subjects--travel, administration, the acquisition of books and photographs, monument restoration--that show Berenson’s thinking not in sustained meditation, but in brief flashes that appear between bits of gossip or the exchange of family news. This is not uninteresting, but it merits a helping hand.
The essays extend that hand by focusing less on his letters and more on his publications. If, as Bernardi states, the aim is to track Berenson’s approach to Byzantine art by focusing on the correspondence (18), the results are mixed. Bernabò’s preface takes no account of the letters, but limits its comments to the publications included in the appendix. He characterizes Berenson as “an outsider, even a lonely idol, in the Italian art history landscape” (13), an opinion derived from the observation that Berenson’s stress on the Byzantine origins of early Italian painting represented an affront to the Fascist intellectuals of the moment, who viewed modern Italy as the natural heir to Rome and its traditions. This may well be true. Berenson’s early articles were published at the moment when the Fascist movement was gaining momentum. At the same time, it tells only part of the story. As his connections with Duveen and the titans of American collecting indicate, Berenson was also the consummate insider, a status that may have played a part in his decision to write on Byzantine art. It can hardly be a coincidence that the triptych that was the subject of his 1920 essay was sold by Duveen in 1919.
The desire to see Berenson as unique continues in Bernardi’s contributions. Although she notes Berenson’s connections to the work of Adolf von Hildenbrandt, William James, Giovanni Morelli, and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle in Chapter 2 (22), she stresses his individualism in Chapter 3, arguing that his view of the Byzantine tradition as classical, Greek, and figurative was rare among Italians even though correspondence with Sergio Bettini (letter 120) shows agreement with this assessment. She then notes that these views already were well established in European scholarship. Thus, far from being a maverick, Berenson connected to and espoused one of the main lines of thinking about Byzantine art in the early twentieth century.
In an effort to demonstrate his practical engagement with Byzantine art, Chapter 4 discusses Berenson’s involvement with post-war restoration efforts at San Marco. Berenson attempted a collaboration with the Byzantinist Thomas Whittemore. This effort was stymied by what appears to have been Whittemore’s complete lack of interest, thus limiting Berenson’s role to fundraising. The chapter concludes with brief references to other projects: his role in steering the Russian scholar Viktor Lazarev’s volume on Byzantine painting to an appropriate publisher and his interactions with collectors. In the latter, a brief paragraph, Bernardi observes only that Berenson’s connections were marginal. This may be so to the extent that he did not deal directly with collectors, but as his relationship with Duveen indicates, Berenson was also a behind-the-scenes operator whose opinion mattered.
Chapter 5, by Spyros Koulouris, rounds out the contributions with an excellent discussion of Berenson’s collection of Byzantine images. Koulouris draws largely on Berenson’s diaries to document his unquenchable thirst for photos. He outlines the growth of the collection and pinpoints the reason for his obsession with photographic documentation. The collection allowed Berenson to hone his visual skills; therefore, studying its images was central to his methodology.
The essays never clarify Berenson’s approach, but as his lust for photos suggest, his evaluation of Byzantine art was of a piece with his study of Italian art. Dowered with the critic’s eye, he used his formidable visual skills to draw conclusions about authorship, date, and place of manufacture, an approach that underscores his connections to Morelli and Cavalcaselle and informs the publications from the 1920s. Based on stylistic analysis, these evaluations were consistent with his earlier publications on Renaissance painting. With respect to Byzantium itself, his writings confirm an understanding of Constantinople as the center of artistic production, a view held by most contemporaries.
The letters in Chapter 6 generally support this view, albeit indirectly. That Berenson was interested in Byzantine art is clear both from statements to that effect throughout the correspondence and by his travel in Byzantine lands. Journeys to North Africa, the eastern Mediterranean, and the Balkans in the 1920s and 30s demonstrate his desire to see works of art firsthand, and his unending requests for photographs underscore his eagerness to study the material upon return to I Tatti. Further, these requests, though far ranging, indicate that his interests lay primarily with the later Byzantine period.
As is often the case in personal correspondence, the letters, by turns gossipy and intimate, professional and opinionated, do not necessarily tell us exactly what we want to know. In this instance the frustration lies in the fact that there is little sustained discussion of Byzantine art. Logistics dominate the travel reports, with long paragraphs recounting the cost and difficulty of travel. Glimpses of Berenson’s views on art and architecture emerge from these accounts, but there is little elaboration. He notes the beauty of Palmyrene ruins, claims a pivotal role for Kalat Siman in the development of western art (letters 31and 36), observes the fascination of the cities of Asia Minor (letter 105), and describes Constantinople as the “great hearth of culture” (letter 43). Only in his unstinting condemnation of H. Sophia, which he described as “as dreary as an opera house where nothing has been given for years” (letter 105), is there any elaboration. As these fragments suggest, Berenson appears to have approached these materials with the spirit of a romantic.
Other letters deal with curatorial and administrative matters connected to the development of the Harvard art history department and its associated collections. As with the travel correspondence, a great deal of the content is logistical and informational: a report to Berenson of a donation of Byzantine coins and seals to Harvard (letter 44), or Berenson’s complaint that books have not arrived (letter 50). Other letters are more descriptive, such as a rundown by Forbes of acquisitions for the Fogg Museum in which he discusses a grab bag of Byzantine and Baroque paintings with the connoisseur’s concern for preservation, provenance, and quality (letter 41).
The letters dealing with Dumbarton Oaks are especially revealing. Correspondence with Sachs and Bliss show Berenson complaining that the center was becoming a Princeton outpost, lamenting personnel decisions and lambasting the academic program (letters 97-100, 157). He decried the broader interest in Byzantine civilization that was the center’s mission, saying that the focus on art was lost. These criticisms reflect his fears for the fate of I Tatti and his desire that as a study center it perpetuate his own approach to art history. They also show that his interest in Byzantine art was single-minded: specifically, his goal was to understand the origins of Italian painting.
A final word on structure and mechanics. Bernardi’s annotations and the biographical sketches are helpful, and inclusion of Berenson’s publications is useful. That said, the publications are reproduced in grainy photographs, and are difficult to read. It is also unclear why the opinion piece on San Marco was translated into English when none of the other Italian contributions have been. Presentation of the visual documentation is also curious. The photos are gathered into separate, disconnected “chapters” rather than in a single section of plates, and references to the photos themselves are buried in the notes, all of which makes it cumbersome to connect pictures with discussions.
If the book’s purpose is to chart Berenson’s approach to Byzantine art, the verdict is mixed. The essays circle around the topic, but never really articulate it. With the exception of Koulouris’s contribution, they do not address his methodology or its place within his own body of work. They also avoid discussion of his involvement with the art market, which matters because this may well have been his entrée into the subject. Finally, there is a lack of connection between the essays and the letters. The letters suggest overwhelmingly that there was nothing exceptional about Berenson’s approach to Byzantium and that, although sincere, his interest was in many respects pragmatic. There certainly appears to have been no depth to or development in his thinking, and by his own admission Berenson preferred Islamic art to Byzantine (letter 89). None of the essays address these issues. That said, the book rewards reading. The letters are engrossing, and Bernardi has done a service collecting them. Likewise, the essays suggest ways of thinking about Berenson and the larger project of art history. In this regard, the volume joins a growing body of work examining the development of the discipline of art history in the early years of the twentieth century.
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Note:
1. “A Newly Discovered Cimabue,” Art in America 8 (1920): 251-71; “Due dipinti del decimosecondo secolo venuti da Costantinopoli,” Dedalo 2 (1921-22): 284-304; and “San Marco, Tempio e Museo Bizantino,” Corriere della Sera, September 2, 1954, p. 3.