Charles Eliot Norton on Bernhard Berenson: Methodological Differences or Ethnic Bias?

Abstract

Charles Eliot Norton (1827–1908), the first professor of art history atHarvard—whose wordwould have had an enormous impact—refused to support the young Bernhard Berenson (1865–1959) when he requested a recommendation for a scholarship application to travel abroad after his final year at Harvard (1886–87) (figs. 1, 2). Was the reason an (unacknowledged) bias against Jews? And was this the same reason that later, knowing of Berenson’s role in assisting Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840–1924) in locating and purchasing Old Master paintings, he apparently never