Artful Partners - Hardcover

It is stunning to read that Berenson, esteemed authority on Italian Renaissance paintingthe man responsible for authenticating works by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphaelwas also a crook, the world's most successful illegitimate art dealer. For 30 years, Simpson maintains, Berenson had a secret partnership with celebrated art broker Lord Duveen. This duo, it is charged here, unloaded forgeries and artworks of dubious distinction on the wealthy and unsuspecting; their duped clientele included Morgans, Rockefellers, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and many other bastions of culture in the U.S. Berenson netted millions, enabling him to live in high style at Tatti, his villa near Florence, where he held court as connoisseur and mentor to a generation of scholars. Duveen, portrayed here as a ruthless, power-hungry conniver, gained credibility from Berenson's reputation for scholarship. Author of bios of Lady Emma Hamilton and Lawrence of Arabia, Simpson has produced an explosive expose, meticulously documented and low-keyed in its approach, yet sensational and damning nonetheless. First serial to Connoisseur magazine.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This fascinating and highly entertaining book proves that even the richest and shrewdest people have at least one weak spot. Thus the desire to acquire "culture" blinded Andrew Mellon, Isabella Stewart Gardner, and others to the unscrupulous dealings of two major figures of the early 20th-century art world: art dealer Duveen and art critic, historian, and connoisseur Berenson. Simpson's access to the Duveen archives and formerly confidential record and account books reveals a secret agreement: Berenson was to receive a percentage of all art sales he helped Duveen consummate, whether through a knowingly false (or correct) attribution to a famous artist or through dealing with clients on Duveen's behalf. Simpson tells his tale well and is not without sympathy for Duveen and Berenson. The story should interest those who follow the art world as well as those who enjoy a good story about wheelers, dealers, con artists, and the very rich. Patricia R. Hausman, Williamsburg Regional Library, Va.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.