Word: berenson
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...practically impossible to serve the muse without dealing with Mammon. That is what Bernard Berenson learned and accepted early in his long and lucrative association with Joseph Duveen, the enterprising head of an international gallery whose customers included most of the world's leading collectors. Berenson, born in 1865 in the Lithuanian ghetto-village of Butrimonys, emigrated to Boston, attended Harvard and eventually became the expert on Italian Renaissance painting. For three generations, until his death in 1959, he reigned as a kind of aesthetic Pope. From his "Vatican," a Tuscan villa known as I Tatti, he issued monographs, criticism...
Bequeathed to Harvard in 1959 by noted art scholar and authenticator Bernard Berenson, the villa houses more than 80,000 books and pamphlets and 150,000 photographs, while also providing a launching point for forays into Florence's vast art collections. Visiting fellows, full-time resident scholars and students with appointments are provided access to the facility's resources...
...villa's social calendar is tame in comparison to Bernard Berenson's time, when I Tatti was the focus of the literati set, says Agnes Mongan, the former director of the Fogg Art Museum and curator of prints emeritus...
Mongan, who also serves on the academic and financial committees that oversee I Tatti's operations, said that Berenson left the villa to Harvard because of its longevity, rather than give it to the National Gallery of Art, which was only 28 years...
...university continues to carry out Berenson's mission of providing opportunities for scholars in any subject a Renaissance man might study, but focuses mainly on the humanities...