"The days before railways and photographs": Berenson's photographic archive and the displacements of art history

Book section : Chapter

This chapter explores how the connoisseur and art historian Bernard Berenson (1865–1959) used photographic reproductions throughout his career, including during his many decades as an expatriate in Italy. It also considers more generally how the triangulation of art historian, art object, and photographic reproduction lies at the very heart of Art History’s disciplinary practices, and how these practices can cause the displacement or even estrangement of scholars from original works of art. This was true for Berenson, who ostensibly moved to Italy to be closer to the Renaissance artworks that were his main area of interest, but who nevertheless ended up relying on – or even preferring – their photographic reproductions. At the same time, the chapter explores how the material realities of photographic reproductions placed in archives such as Berenson’s Fototeca at his Florentine home, Villa i Tatti, engender their own forms of intimacy and can produce their own sense of place. When placed in a photographic archive, the reproduction becomes, in effect, ‘the event’ itself, to use Berenson’s terminology. Indeed, in Berenson’s case, he arguably became as much a connoisseur of photographic reproductions as he was of Renaissance drawings and paintings.

Authors: Johnson, GA

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Routledge
• Host title: Photo Archives and the Place of Photography
• Pages: 97-114
• Chapter number: 6
• Series: Routledge History of Photography
• Place of publication: London
• Publication date: 2025-02-07
• Acceptance date: 2024-11-22
• Edition: 1
• DOI: 10.4324/9781003086260-9
• EISBN: 9781003086260
• ISBN: 9781350107533
• Language: English
• Keywords: Bernard Berenson; historiography of art history; photography; Erwin Panofsky; Villa i Tatti; photographic reproductions
• Subtype: Chapter