Word: berenson
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...professor like Charles Eliot Norton was a good friend to have, not only for Isabella Stewart Gardner but for Bernard Berenson. It was due to Norton's suggestion that Belle Gardner started collecting rare books and manuscripts instead of gowns and jewels, and it was Norton who got a group of wealthy Bostonians to finance a traveling fellowship for Berenson when he lost the Parker Fellowship in 1887 to another Harvard student...
...Berenson set off for Europe after thanking and saying goodbye to one of the most generous supporters of his trip- Mrs. Jack Gardner. A correspondence between Mrs. Jack and her protege Berenson commenced, yet his unproductive and lackluster early years of study brought a stop to the letters and financial encouragement of Mrs. Gardner. Not until 1894, when Berenson presented her with "a little book on Venetian painting," was he to regain her confidence, this time a confidence great enough for her to want him as her art consultant...
Even before Berenson began to cultivate Mrs. Jack's taste in the arts, Mr. and Mrs. Jack Gardner had bought a few paintings on their own- based on their own likes and dislikes. The Concert by Vermeer was bought at the Hotel Druout auction galleries in Paris in 1892; the little Dutch girl seated at the piano with the light streaming in through the window captivated Belle Gardner. In the Gardner Museum's Dutch room today, where the light falls on the stone floor, the Vermeer shines as one of the most exquisite of the artist's works anywhere...
...Berenson was also aware of Isabella Stewart Gardner's familial vanity; he sold her portraits of Isabellas and paintings owned by Isabellas, Mrs. Jack "equated herself with all the Isabellas of History- from Spain to Italy- and so thorough was her identification that she would buy any work of art that was at all connected with any one of these illustrious ladies...
AFTER reading with Charles Eliot Norton's Dante Society and talking with Crawford about Italian writing, Mrs. Jack felt the need to surround herself with original Italian oils. Her pipeline to Italian art was filled by Bernard Berenson; The Tragedy of Lucretia by Botticelli was one of her first investments in her Italian art venture...