Volume 26, Number 20 · December 20, 1979
Only in America
By Robert Hughes
Bernard Berenson: The Making of a Connoisseur
by Ernest Samuels
Harvard University Press, 477 pp., $15.00
Being Bernard Berenson
by Meryle Secrest
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 473 pp., $15.95
'If small, lithe tigers could speak, they would have the voice and intelligence of this feline Pole. He has velvet paws and killer talons of steel. He's let his beard grow to cover up the fact that he is only half a man. His eyes are blue, the better to deceive…. His ambition, which is consuming, is to be recognized as the world's greatest expert on the Italian primitives; and he achieved his goal about three years ago. He is a dying man, but he'll go on for a long, long time. He doesn't do business or accept commissions, but he shares in the profits. 'Here are 25,000 francs, M. Berenson.' 'Merci, Gimpel.''
Review, 6754 words
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