Harvard's Outpost in Settignano

Any Italian villa opulently rising from its verdant grounds is enough to stir the most prosaic of imaginations. The English poets eulogized the effect a long time ago and the sensation has not worn thin. But at Settignano, a few miles from the riches of Florence, there is to be found a villa of very special spiritual proportions. It is I Tatti, the home of Bernard Berenson.

Here, Bernard Berenson '87, an extraordinary mind, a mind dedicated to the canons of renaissance grace and the call of exhaustive inquiry, has labored, searched and meditated. I Tatti has already become something of a legend.

The long life of B.B., now ninety-three, has brought him into intimate contact with some of western man's greatest artistic creations and into the acquaintance and friendship of his most distinguished of contemporaries. Many have made the pilgrimage to I Tatti; some to engage Berenson in conversation, his favored "verbal art," others in search of wise counsel, yet others ask, and even cajole, the "world's greatest art expert" for his nod concerning the authenticity of works of art. Berenson has always proved affable, crudite and incorruptible. There were those, like Isabella Stuart Gardiner of Boston, who built collections on Berenson's word. The opinion of a man with lofty aesthetic aspirations soon acquired a market value and before long Berenson found it necessary to turn away from his doors anyone who approached with a canvas.

Once at Settignano, a letter of invitation offering a glimpse at the phenomenon of I Tatti, "if it amuses you," was presented, and the gates swung open upon the heart and soul of Bernard Berenson.

About houses Berenson has written, "It is a machine a vivre, if you like, as there is a similar machine our bodies, but like my body my house has a soul--I hope." It has indeed. The exterior of I Tatti with its light walls, gardens and terraces is one of those sumptuous affairs the romantics of old would have called a "typical Italian villa." Internally it is unique. Berenson has also observed that a house can be "part of one's raiment, the outerrost garment. ..." It is a perfect description of I Tatti, an instrument for and product of the pursuit of what B.B. calls "IT". "IT", he explains, "comes to mean taking life ritually as something holy, of mystical import and in one's thought ideatedly--if not in realizable actuality as a sacred performance. From childhood I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament. With the years it merged into the wish that it could be lived with the significance of a work of art."

It is a poetical criterion which has directed Berenson's personal vision; all the more unique for an "expert," (the quotation marks are his own), to say of his ideal, "IT is incapable of analysis, requires no explanations and no apology, is self-evident and right. ... One may sing about it but not discuss it. IT is the most immediate and mystical way."

B.B. himself was away at his summer home at Vallambrosa, where he was to be met later, but his spirit reigned nonetheless. Closest to his own heart is his proudest achievement, indeed the only one in which he is willing to acknowledge true pride, his remarkable and extensive library. He is reflected especially in the substance and fruit of his learning, his extraordinary collection of Italian painting ranging from Giotto to Bellini.

In the living room hangs a superb Sassetta tryptich, one which Berenson found in an antique shop moments before its intended destruction for wood panels. It overlooks a deeply lit sanctum of well worn opulence. A recording of Verdi's Requiem rested upon one of two pianos. Copies of The Reporter and other magazines of contemporary interest covered a large center table. Aesthetics and history have both impassioned B.B., whose thirst for knowledge has been watered by immense energy. But Berenson's soul is of a renaissance tint and its tempo, plus, of course, the weight of his convictions, has led him to declare, "I pity you because you must live in this age of decadence and despair."

Strange that this condemnation includes modern art as well as modern life; strange, but in a way logical. For Berenson, connoisseur and aesthete that he is, represents a given area of taste, a given vintage. His taste reflects the refined tradition of Hellenism, of Classical proportion. In this way, Berenson looks dubiously upon both primitive art and on the creations of the modern idiom, the more naive frescoes of the twelfth century as the sophisticated manner of the modern French. Yet, what Berenson loves he loves well and completely. To the sphere of Athenian refinement, of what he calls "tactile values," he has given much.

Would that there were more time at I Tatti. A whirlwind tour of the museum Berenson, for it is literally that, doesn't suffice even for a first look. But Berenson would be awaiting his visitors at Casa al Dono. Time remained only for a few photographs. The Tuscan light, often over-brilliant, favors subjects admirably. A deep grey light of great clarity pronounced the rich earth colors of the Sassetta-like hills with their patterned bushes. The occasional pieces of white sculpture became phantasmal objects in their arbors of thick foliage. The tall veridian poplars of Piero della Francesa made familiar shapes against the clear sky.

It is Berenson's wish that all this1