Bernard Berenson, recalled
In the fall of 1884, a slender teenager dressed in a worn suit walked into Harvard Yard. The transfer student from Boston University was Bernard Berenson, a son of a Boston tin peddler and a future world-famous art historian and connoisseur. Entering Harvard gave the former Bernhard Valvrojenski, who was probably the first Russian Jew admitted to the College, “a status he coveted,” one scholar wrote. It was place where he could immerse himself in studying ancient and romance languages, witness a world just awakening to the organized study of art history, and feel the liberating and libertine dazzle of Italian Renaissance painting, which had just begun to attract American scholars and investors. For the rest of his life, from a seat of fame and scholarship near Florence, Italy, Berenson, Class of 1887, enjoyed a love affair with his alma mater. Proof of that love remains today in Villa I Tatti, his...