Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade

by Rachel Cohen

From the prizewinning Jewish Lives series, an illuminating new biography of the connoisseur who changed the art world and the way we see art  When Gilded Age millionaires wanted to buy Italian Renaissance paintings, the expert whose opinion they sought was Bernard Berenson, with his vast erudition, incredible eye, and uncanny skill at attributing paintings. They visited Berenson at his beautiful Villa I Tatti, in the hills outside Florence, and walked with him through the immense private library—which he would eventually bequeath to Harvard—without ever suspecting that he had grown up in a poor Lithuanian Jewish immigrant family that had struggled to survive in Boston on the wages of the father’s work as a tin peddler. Berenson’s extraordinary self-transformation, financed by the explosion of the Gilded Age art market and his secret partnership with the great art dealer Joseph Duveen, came with painful costs: he hid his origins and felt that he had betrayed his gifts as an interpreter of paintings. Nevertheless his way of seeing, presented in his books, codified in his attributions, and institutionalized in the many important American collections he helped to build, goes on shaping the American understanding of art today.

This finely drawn portrait of Berenson, the first biography devoted to him in a quarter century, draws on new archival materials that bring out the significance of his secret business dealings and the way his family and companions—including his patron Isabella Stewart Gardner, his lover Belle da Costa Greene, and his dear friend Edith Wharton—helped to form his ideas and his legacy. Rachel Cohen explores Berenson’s inner world and exceptional visual capacity while also illuminating the historical forces—new capital, the developing art market, persistent anti-Semitism, and the two world wars—that profoundly affected his life.

About Jewish Lives: 

Jewish Lives is a prizewinning series of interpretative biography designed to explore the many facets of Jewish identity. Individual volumes illuminate the imprint of Jewish figures upon literature, religion, philosophy, politics, cultural and economic life, and the arts and sciences. Subjects are paired with authors to elicit lively, deeply informed books that explore the range and depth of the Jewish experience from antiquity to the present.

In 2014, the Jewish Book Council named Jewish Lives the winner of its Jewish Book of the Year Award, the first series ever to receive this award.

More praise for Jewish Lives:

"Excellent" –New York Times

"Exemplary" –Wall Street Journal

"Distinguished" –New Yorker

"Superb" –The Guardian

Genres: Biography, Art, Nonfiction, Art History, Judaism, 20th Century, Biography Memoir

344 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Rachel Cohen has written essays for The New Yorker, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, Apollo, The New York Times, The Nation, The Threepenny Review, The Believer, McSweeney’s and other publications, and her essays have been anthologized in Best American Essays and in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. Her third book, Austen Years: A Memoir in Five Novels was published by FSG in July 2020 to critical acclaim. Austen Years is a meditation on reading, having children, the death of her father, five novels by Jane Austen, and reading again in times of isolation and transformation.

Cohen's first book, A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, (Random House, 2004) is a series of thirty-six linked essays about the encounters among thirty figures in American history during the long century from the civil war through the civil rights movement; it won the PEN/Jerard Fund Award, was a finalist for the Guardian First Book Prize and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award, and was named a notable book of the year by the Los Angeles Times and by Maureen Corrigan on National Public Radio. Her second book, Bernard Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade, (Yale University Press, 2013) investigates the development of a great art connoisseur who began life as a penniless Lithuanian immigrant and made his career in the world of Gilded Age finance and prejudice. It was longlisted for the JQ Wingate prize and an excerpt from it appeared in the New Yorker under the title "Priceless."

Cohen has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago, and lives in Chicago.

Reviews

[Barry Hammond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Art critic, connoisseur, writer, dealer and cultivator of the library at I Tatti, which he bequeathed to Harvard, Bernard Berenson was a self-made man who went from penniless immigrant to the top of society. He was also possibly the model for the Jastrow uncle in Herman Wouk's "The Winds Of War," and "War and Remembrance." Through his society connections he also managed to survive WWII in occupied Italy even though he was a well-known Jewish intellectual. A fascinating story of a complex and difficult man, who flouted all conventions of his time and invented a life for himself. This biography by Rachel Cohen explores his life and character in all its complexity and benefits from new scholarship which reveals previously unknown details. A remarkable read. - BH.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many ways he was a remarkable man. His Jewish parents emigrated from Lithuania bringing Bernard when he was about ten. He graduated from Harvard University, and became interested in Italian Renaissance paintings. He spent most of his life in Italy, writing definitive books on the subject, serving as a expert to art dealers. He helped build the collections of Elizabeth Stewart Gardner and Mellon. His home I Tatti in Florence held his art collection and library, and became a place for scholars. He donated it to Harvard at his death.

[Em__Jay]

Adding this to my to-read list after reading and enjoying the fiction novel The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chock full of details from the life and times of Bernard Berenson. Having read Personal Librarian, I was especially interested in reading Rachel Cohen's descriptions of his relationship with Belle and how Bernard and his wife Mary balanced other relationships in their personal like.
The book peaked my interest about Edith Wharton and her many and varied interests and accomplishments.

[Maria Grazia Carrara Gala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Che dire : mi sono subito innamorata di Berenson e di Boston . E ho avuto la fortuna di leggerlo a Boston! Visitare il Gardner Museum, passeggiare al campus di Harvard … insomma mi sono immedesimata nella vita di Berenson in piena Gilded Age.
Consigliato a chi è appassionato di arte come me !!!

[Ben Kruskal · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating biography of a fascinating person in a fascinating milieu. This is the 2nd bio of BB I’ve read and the 4th book of heavily overlapping content and I keep getting more and more fascinated.

[Gabe Chazan]

fascinating!

[Robert Poortinga · Rating 4 out of 5]

absolutely wonderfully written biography.

[John Stein · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderfully written book not only about fascinating man, but about the beginnings of the modern art market. The Jewish perspective is especially interesting

[Margaret · Rating 3 out of 5]

Concise story of Berenson's life, but didn't really entrance me.