What transpires when a self-described capitalist engages a world-renowned connoisseur of Renaissance Italian art to refine and enhance his vast collection? Stanley Mazaroff explores in depth the complex relationship and the exchanges between Baltimore collector Henry Walters and scholar Bernard Berenson. The years covered in his study, principally 1910 through 1916, proved critical for both of them: Berenson was beginning to venture into the art market, collaborating with Joseph Duveen in a partnership that would sometimes compromise his judgment, and Walters, having just completed a Genoese palazzo-style museum building, was hastening to fill it with additional purchases.
The Johns Hopkins University Press has devoted two publications to the Walters collection. This writer’s William and Henry Walters, the Reticent Collectors (1999) is primarily biographical and deals with two generations of the Walters family, their lifestyles, and their varied activities in finance and philanthropy, as well as their art collecting. The current volume, in contrast, examines Henry Walters’s most pivotal, yet most controversial acquisition, the Marcello Massarenti collection. With this single purchase of more than sixteen hundred works of art in 1902, Henry Walters created the core collection for a museum that he would eventually bequeath to his native city in memory of his father.
In particular, Mazaroff focuses on the 520 Italian paintings in the collection, ranging from the Gothic through the Baroque periods. Although aware of the rumors then circulating regarding the authenticity of many of these works, Walters could not have anticipated that so many of their original attributions would prove untenable. Realizing that neither he nor his immediate advisers could resolve such issues themselves, he retained Berenson for advice on the elimination of works, additional purchases, and the cataloguing of the collection.
Berenson faced numerous challenges in his dealings with his client. Though seemingly profligate when purchasing objets d’art in an astonishingly wide range of fields, Henry Walters was far less cavalier when it came to paying large sums for individual paintings. Winnowing the collection was equally problematic, given Walters’s extreme reluctance to part with anything; the offending works were usually merely consigned to storage. Most significantly, Berenson was already overextended; he had previous commitments to other clients and, once partnered with Duveen in 1912, he no longer regarded Henry Walters and his collection as a top priority.
Mazaroff examines Berenson’s proposals for the many works to be discarded, and he also discusses Berenson’s thirty-six additions, observing that, although none of the latter were truly stellar, they contributed to the breadth of the collection. By eliminating the pretentious attributions inherited from Massarenti, Berenson’s major contribution was not through additions but through “a refined process of subtraction.” In the course of his research, Mazaroff discovered considerable new information both in Baltimore and at I Tatti, Berenson’s villa at Settignano. As a result of Mazaroff’s perseverance and through the diligence of the archivists in Florence, much of Berenson’s research on the Walters collection, previously unlocated, was rediscovered. Mazaroff’s realization that Walters’s 1915 handbook incorporated many of Berenson’s reattributions proves particularly significant for the study of the Italian holdings, especially in view of the fact that the proposed scholarly catalogue was abandoned after Walters severed his ties with the expert in 1917.
Although Mazaroff has ostensibly confined his research to one aspect of the Walters collection, the scope of his research is far more expansive. Not only does he provide rare insights into the personalities of his key subjects, Walters and Berenson, but he also presents an exceptional overview of the art market during their time. His observations should prove fascinating to all readers who are interested in collecting during the Gilded Age.
William R. Johnston
Curator Emeritus, The Walters Art Museum