Berenson and Islamic Culture: “Thought and Temperament”

This article deals with an as yet unstudied aspect of the multifaceted life and interests of Bernard Berenson (the celebrated American art historian and art collector, founder of Villa I Tatti, currently the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), namely his long and complex encounter and engagement with the culture and civilization of Islam. The article is based on original research across a wide range of sources, from Berenson’s travel diaries and correspondence to his autobiographical works and his essays on aesthetics. The formation of his Islamic art collection and of his Oriental Library, today the Asian and Islamic Collection of the Biblioteca Berenson, are also included in this research, as is the accumulation of material relevant to Islamic art in the Biblioteca Berenson and Fototeca at I Tatti. The article follows Berenson’s trajectory from his juvenile studies in Arabic at Harvard University, through his intense as well as brief passion for Persian miniatures, which he collected with notable skill over a short period (1910-13), up to his increasing skepticism and detachment in relation to the Islamic world and its culture, following the period of his travels in the Mediterranean (1920s and 1930s), the events of World War II, and the rising of the Israeli question in the Middle East. The article provides a sketch of this hitherto unknown side of Berenson’s personality, which, although marginal with respect to the main field of his intellectual activity, may offer insights into his entire life’s work, as well as another significant piece in the mosaic of Euro-American Orientalism astride the nineteenth- and twentieth centuries.