author
Bernard Berenson
1865–1959
A brilliant and controversial expert on Italian Renaissance art, he helped shape the way generations of readers and collectors looked at paintings. His writing brought scholarship and personal response together in a way that still feels lively.
2 Audiobooks
The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance With An Index To Their Works
by Bernard Berenson
The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance Third Edition
by Bernard Berenson
About the author
Born in what is now Lithuania in 1865, he emigrated with his family to Boston as a child and later studied at Harvard. He became one of the best-known authorities on Italian Renaissance painting, admired for his sharp eye, elegant prose, and confidence in judging attribution and quality.
His books on Florentine, Venetian, Central Italian, and North Italian painters made his reputation, and his study The Drawings of the Florentine Painters was especially influential. He spent much of his life at Villa I Tatti near Florence, which became a center for study, conversation, and collecting.
Berenson's legacy is impressive but also debated. He had enormous influence on museums, collectors, and the art market, and later readers have also looked closely at the commercial side of his work and the authority he exercised as a connoisseur. He died in 1959, leaving behind a body of writing that remains important to the history of art.