Officina Libraria, in conjunction with Villa I Tatti, publishes The Bernard and Mary Berenson Collection of European Paintings at I Tatti, edited by Carl Brandon Strehlke and Machtelt Brüggen Israëls. This comprehensive 824-page catalogue includes essays by many leading art historians and 650 color and black-and-white images.
From the publisher:
When in early 1901 Bernard and Mary Berenson, newlyweds who had
been longtime companions, moved to I Tatti—now the Harvard University
Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, they proudly installed the first fruits
of their collecting: Domenico Veneziano, Sassetta, and Giambono.The gathering soon expanded to include other great Renaissance masters
like Giotto, Pietro Lorenzetti, and Signorelli. The Berensons even kept
some of their early mistakes like fakes by Federico Icilio Joni, and Bernard
made forays into modern art buying Matisse and Picasso.This catalogue, written by an international team of scholars—i.e. Giovanni
Agosti, Alessandro Angelini, Daniele Benati, Luciano Bellosi, Keith
Christiansen, Andrea De Marchi, Everett Fahy, Cecilia Frosinini, Dillian
Gordon, Michel Laclotte, Vittoria Romani, Dóra Sallay, Jacopo Stoppa,
Marco Tanzi, etc.—, contains new original art historical investigations of
about 140 paintings still at I Tatti and essays about the Berensons and their
ambient. The texts take full advantage of new archival research and of technical studies of each work conducted in collaboration with the Opificio
delle Pietre Dure in Florence.The catalogue, including 101 paintings formerly at I Tatti listed in an
illustrated appendix, is a remarkable window into the Berensons’ intellectual
concerns, the early world of connoisseurship in which they were principal
players, and the importance of that practice in the development of twentieth-century Italian art history and criticism.
Sassetta, St. Francis in Ecstasy, tempera on panel, 1437-44. Florence, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Berenson Collection
Domenico Veneziano, Madonna and Child. Florence, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Berenson Collection, Inventory nr.: P 31. Photo: Antonio Quattrone (2000)
Giotto, Entombment of Jesus, ca. 1320-25. Florence, Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, Berenson Collection