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At that time, American most affluent families were about to enter the market competition to acquire and collect masterpieces by Italian Old Masters painters of the period from 1300 to 1600. Berenson therefore soon became an authority in the field and started to receive commissions from art dealers to authenticate paintings. His success enabled him to rent I Tatti in 1900 and later on to buy, enlarge it and turn it into an academic Arcadian retreat with a magnificent library and an unrivalled collection of study materials.
The Philadelphian born Mary Logan Whitall Smith was the daughter of a Quaker family of means although her parents left their family glass business to become famous evangelical proselytes and religious book authors. Mary started to affirm her own sense of direction as an adolescent and, declaring that every girl had the right to receive a college education, attended the Smith College and the Radcliffe. On one of the family visit to England a young Anglo-Irish lawyer, a favourite pupil of Jovett, had fallen in love with he. He pursued he to Cambridge, she accepted him, was converted to Catholicism, and persuaded her family to move to England. They married in 1885 and settled in London, where they entered into the activities of the Fabian Society. Mary’s sister Alys became the first wife of Bertrand Russell and her brother Logan a minor literary figure at Oxford. Of the marriage with Costelloe, Mary gave birth to two daughters. She abandoned her conventional and comfortable first life to become the protégée then-wife of Berenson. In 1890 Berenson met the Costelloes and was invited to spend some time at the Smith’s house, Friday’s Hill. Mary was completely captivated by Berenson’s passion for Italian Renaissance Art and fell in love both with the man and the subject. In the next year she broke her marriage and moved to Fiesole paying only intermitting visits to England to stay with her daughters. Her influence was of critical importance in persuading Berenson to write his first book. In 1899 Costelloe died suddenly at the age of forty-five and Bernard and Mary married on Christmas Day, 190, in the chapel at I Tatti in which they are now buried.
Although it is hard to select pieces from Berenson’s books and art critical writing, it would be impossible not to mention in this website a few abstracts from Berenson’s Venetian Painter of the Renaissance (1894). Drawing his self-disciplined ‘scientific method’ from the Italian art historian Giovanni Morelli for re-attribution, Berenson combined it also with great sensitivity to different style and a phenomenal memory. Kenneth Clark described Berenson as gazing intently at a picture ‘through magnifying glass, tap the surface gently (to test the panel or the relining of the canvas) and then dramatically murmur a name’.