Berenson’s Elixir

Simon Schama

  • Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur by Ernest Samuels
    Harvard, 477 pp, £9.50, June 1979, ISBN 0 674 06775 4
  • Being Bernard Berenson by Meryle Secrest
    Weidenfeld, 473 pp, £8.50, January 1980, ISBN 2 9787756 4 5

Bernard Berenson once began a will with the phrase: ‘If I die ...’ Such a prudential approach to immortality is understandable coming from someone who had been transmogrified into a sacred relic during his lifetime. In his octogenarian splendour, looking like some pixillated Nestor, venerated from far and near as the oracular source of wisdom on Italian art, ‘II Bibi’ took on an iconic quality. In the public mind, he became the incarnation of Renaissance man, sustaining an exquisite humanism amidst the detritus of European cultural collapse.

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions