Bernard Berenson (1865–1959,) born Bernhard Valvrojenski, was an American art critic, connoisseur, and historian. An authority on the art of the Italian Renaissance, he paved the way for scholarship and curation on this subject for the first half of the twentieth century.
Born in Vilnius, Lithuania, Berenson moved to America in 1875, studied at Harvard University, and became a foremost authority on Italian Renaissance art. In 1900, he moved to Italy, where he lived in an 18th-century villa, I Tatti, outside Florence.
Berenson produced a vast amount of critical literature on the works of each of the Italian schools. His Italian Painters of the Renaissance (1894–1907) developed the premise that the ‘tactile value’ of a work of art stimulated a state of increased awareness in the spectator. Berenson also produced The Study and Criticism of Italian Art (1901–16,) Aesthetics and History (1950,) and the autobiographical Sketch for a Self Portrait (1949.)
Berenson endowed his villa and art collection to Harvard University, which turned it into The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. It now houses many Italian primitives and Chinese and Islamic art. Its research library comprises 140,000 volumes and 250,000 photographs.
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Government lasts as long as the under-taxed can defend themselves against the over-taxed.
—Bernard Berenson
Topics: Taxation, Taxes
Between truth and the search for it, I choose the second.
—Bernard Berenson
Topics: Truth
Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
—Bernard Berenson
Topics: Consistency, Action, Change
Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.
—Bernard Berenson
Topics: Life and Living
I wish I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours.
—Bernard Berenson
Topics: Trust, Waste, Time Management, Time, Value of Time, Excess, Carpe-diem
Miracles happen to those who believe in them. Otherwise why does not the Virgin Mary appear to Lamaists, Mohammedans, or Hindus who have never heard of her?
—Bernard Berenson
Topics: Miracles, Belief
I wonder whether art has a higher function than to make me feel, appreciate, and enjoy natural objects for their art value. So, as I walk in the garden, I look at the flowers and shrubs and trees and discover in them an exquisiteness of contour, a vitality of edge or a vigor of spring as well as an infinite variety of color that no artifact I have seen in the last 60 years can rival.
—Bernard Berenson
Topics: Art
We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: “Too bad we can’t get together more often”.
—Bernard Berenson
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