Kenneth Clark: Life, Art and Civilisation. James Stourton
Lotto is a Lotto, every Cariani a Cariani’; he conceived his life as a sacred mission.
Connoisseurship has taken some hard knocks since Berenson’s time – indeed, partly because of the financial rewards it brought him – but it has always been necessary to know who painted what, and this was especially so in the undeveloped field in which Berenson began to operate. He was building on the foundations of Crowe and Cavalcaselle,3 and above all Giovanni Morelli, who had begun an analysis of the ‘handwriting’ of Italian artists. Morelli had studied comparative anatomy in Germany, and began to apply a similar scientific method of classification to the study of painting, through attention to details such as hands and drapery, in what critics called the ‘ear and toenail school’. Berenson became the most famous practitioner of this approach, although he emerged as a singular kind of art historian. While British writers such as Walter Pater might describe works of art in literary terms, and Germans might attempt to analyse them, Berenson used his encyclopaedic knowledge to create accurate ‘lists’ of the corpus of Italian Renaissance artists. With the publication of these lists, and the influential introductory essays that went with them, Berenson’s opinion became almost Holy Writ amongst dealers and collectors. Their appearance coincided with the unprecedented exodus of art from Europe to America, and Berenson’s imprimatur was considered the most likely to be accurate in a field of speculative guesswork.
In 1900 Berenson had married Mary Costelloe, who came from a Philadelphia Quaker background. With what Clark called her ‘Chaucerian common sense’, Mary considered nothing more important than a home, stability and outward signs of success. Where her husband was exquisite, secretive and cerebral, Mary was large, impulsive, trusting and energetic. Clark described them together: ‘Mr Berenson was small and nimble and the sight of them walking together in the hills reminded me of a solicitous mahout directing the steps of an elephant.’4 Mary always needed money, initially to enlarge I Tatti and later to subsidise her children by a previous marriage. She strongly encouraged BB to use his talents commercially, although neither of them could have foreseen how lucrative this would become. The retainers and commissions he earned from art dealers, especially the ebullient Joseph Duveen,5 for authenticating paintings made BB a rich man. Duveen was the most successful of all art dealers, by dint of his access not only to the sellers in Europe, but more importantly the buyers in America, which gave him a paramount position in that extraordinary transfer of art across the Atlantic – facilitated by Berenson’s passport.
The most visible manifestation of the Berensons’ new affluence was the development of the gardens and the library at I Tatti. The interior of the villa still contains large, beautiful white rooms with touches of damask that set off BB’s extraordinary collection of Renaissance paintings. The house remains comfortable rather than luxurious, a perfect retreat for a humanist scholar. At the heart of the house, and its main point, was the sombre library which some thought was BB’s finest achievement; it is one of the best collections of art history books anywhere. Eventually I Tatti became as famous as its owner – the two became synonymous – and as Clark wrote: ‘There are many more spectacular villas in Italy but none have played a greater role in the cultural life of Europe – and the United States – for over half a century.’6
The Berensons enjoyed a princely train de vie at I Tatti, with the support of a large staff. Every day distinguished or merely rich visitors would be invited up for lunch, while those of lesser importance came for tea. The responsibility for the guests would rest with Nicky Mariano, whom Clark described as ‘one of the most universally beloved people in the world’. Nicky – ‘half Neapolitan and half Baltic baron’ – had originally been hired as BB’s librarian and secretary. Many people fell in love with her, but she reserved herself for the Berensons, and never lost their adoration. She was the living embodiment of Berenson’s favourite phrase, ‘life enhancing’. Clark once said that the most genuine thing about BB was his love for Nicky. She oiled the wheels of life at I Tatti while Mr and Mrs Berenson pursued emotionally chaotic lives in different directions.
Mary especially liked clever young Englishmen; before Clark arrived, her sister Alys Russell had already introduced Lytton Strachey, Maynard Keynes and Geoffrey Scott to the Berensons. Scott was the author of The Architecture of Humanism (which was already a major influence on Clark’s temporarily set-aside book on the Gothic Revival), and was to become a central figure in the Anglo-American Florentine world. Mary fell in love with this homme fatale, who became entrusted with much of the architectural work at I Tatti, while his partner, the architect Cecil Pinsent, oversaw the design of the formal garden. This contained box hedges and pebble mosaics, with cypress walks and ilex groves beyond. Both men were party to many of Mary’s fanciful schemes – often accomplished in BB’s absence, and the cause of Jehovah-like rages. Added to this ménage was Mary’s brother Logan, who had his own room at I Tatti and remained a sardonic observer. Logan’s occasional funny stories would be dismissed by BB with, ‘Dear me, what a smutty old clown Logan is becoming.’ Another key member of the court was Umberto Morra,7 a scholarly young literary friend whose anti-fascist views made him especially welcome, and who was to become a lifelong friend of Clark, and almost a son to Berenson. Finally, visitors included BB’s numerous girlfriends, the most significant of whom was the exotic siren who ran the Morgan Library in New York, Belle da Costa Greene. BB would write to her with the same frequency with which Clark would later write to his own girlfriends.
The dependency on art dealers that underpinned the economics of I Tatti is generally credited with having distracted Berenson from writing ‘the great book’. He left behind some brilliant fragmentary writings, including propositions about the nature of our responses to works of art with his ‘tactile values’, but the ‘lists’ with their introductory essays, especially The Drawings of the Florentine Painters, remain his most important art historical legacy. According to Clark’s view, Berenson’s disillusionment with his life choices was very evident by the 1920s, and he spoke surprisingly rarely about art. Clark wondered if distaste for the means of earning a living had not in some way put Berenson off the Italian Renaissance, for he studied – and talked about – almost everything else. His conversation at meals was customarily a monologue on history or literature. Typically, he might summarise the decline of Classical art, the rise of the Persian epic, the early history of the Scythians, and offer a warning about the evils of fascism. But it was on his afternoon walks, without a grand audience to show off to, that Berenson was at his best. Then he would talk about nature with a sensitivity which reminded Clark that underneath he possessed the soul of a poet, who had lost his way.
Why did Berenson take Clark on? A handsome, clever Oxford acolyte was always welcome, but there was a specific task in mind. As Clark put it, ‘During these years collectors, dealers and students of art history were all clamouring for revised lists, and I don’t see how Mr Berenson could have refused them.’8 The ‘lists’ were by now very out of date, and a standing reproach to BB’s own revisions and reputation; someone was needed to do the groundwork. The revised lists and the accompanying text would be much less fun to compile than the originals – no pilgrimages to fragrant valleys north of Bergamo, but instead a mass of dubious photographs: ‘Those photographs!’ said Clark. ‘They were like a plague of flies which descended on I Tatti, driving everybody mad.’9 Berenson proposed that Clark simply go and browse in the library, but the practical Mary set him to work on Giovanni Bellini. Soon, however, he abandoned browsing and started in earnest on the revision of Drawings of the Florentine Painters. Graduating from the I Tatti library to the Gabinetto dei Disegni of the Uffizi, he found dozens of drawings not in the ‘lists’, but when he took his notes back to BB ‘he was not much interested. He had done his work fifty years ago, and did not want to be reminded of it.’*
Clark fitted well into I Tatti. BB found him ‘thorough and painstaking’, and ‘genial and loveable always consumed with intellectual