Word: berenson
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...Another Berenson-directed investment, and this time one that would pay off as one of the greatest Italian paintings the world would ever see, was Titian's Rape of Europa. Few paintings have served as such imaginative inspiration to other artists; it is known that Rubens and Sir Joshua Reynolds had copies from the original in Venice; this painting also influenced Van Dyck and Rembrandt, as well as the Spanish school (e. g. Velazquez). The picture is of a white bull carrying away the swirlingscafed Europa on his back; blue vs. red is the dominant color scheme typical of Titian...
Also in the Early Italian Room is a five-panelled work by Simone Martini, The Madonna and Child, With Four Saints. This work is the only complete Martini altarpiece of so large a size that exists outside of Italy; this was another Berenson acquisition. The panels' depiction of the virgin and saints anticipates the poetry of a later Italian artist, Modigliani...
Other spoils of Berenson's Italian conquests include Raphael's Pieta and a portrait of a Roman Count, a Guardi scene of Venice, Botticelli's Madonna and Child, Giotto's Jesus, Fra Angelico's Assumption, etc. Few museums equal the Gardner's extensive collection of Italian masters. But Berenson was not to stop at conquering Italian walls; sensing Mrs. Jack's interest in a bargain, he induced her to buy Durer, Holbein, Rubens, and Rembrandt...
...Jack was always doing her own collecting concurrently with art expert Berenson's advice. An example of her personal astuteness was the addition to her collection of Anders Zorn (painter and paintings), whom she met in 1893 at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Mrs. Gardner was walking through the exhibit when she saw a painting that she liked, The Omnibus, she asked a man in the gallery who had done it; it was the artist himself, Anders Zorn. She bought the picture of passengers in a bus, and from there started another of her artist friendships...
...Jack never forget Charles Eliot Norton's inspiring lectures at Harvard not the wisdom that Berenson applied to amass her Italian collection...