The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti

Cet imposant volume catalogue scientifiquement les 140 œuvres d’art réunies par Bernard Berenson et son épouse Mary dans leur maison de Florence à partir de la fin du XIXe siècle.

À travers les objets qui leur ont appartenu, nous découvrons les intérêts intellectuels et artistiques du couple. Les notices des tableaux ont été rédigées par des historiens de l’art du monde entier.
Toutes présentent les détails techniques, l’origine et les aspects stylistiques des œuvres, et sont abondamment illustrées par des images réalisées pour l’occasion, des photos comparatives, des radiographies et des images historiques. Le volume contient en outre des essais sur le développement de la collection Berenson.

Edited by Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls, The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti surveys the 149 works assembled by the Berensons for their home in Florence from the late 1890s through the first decades of the twentieth century at the time that they were making their mark on the world as connoisseurs. The catalogue presents a privileged window on the Berensons' intellectual interests through the objects they owned. The entries, written by an international team of art historians, take full advantage of the extensive correspondence from the Berensons' friends, family, and colleagues at I Tatti as well as the couple's diaries and notations on the backs of their vast gathering of photographs. All the entries are lavishly illustrated with full scholarly and technical accountings of the objects. There are also 17 illustrated reconstructions of the original contexts of panel paintings. The catalogue includes essays on the progress of the Berensons' collecting, their love for Siena, the Sienese forger Icilio Federico Joni, the critic Roger Fry, and René Piot's murals at I Tatti, as well as a listing of 94 pictures that were once at I Tatti including donations made to museums in Europe and America.