During the last 40 years few names have acquired such a golden resonance in the world of art as that of Bernard Berenson, greatest living connoisseur of Italian art. Dealers like the millionaire Duveens have hung like schoolboys on his opinion, and among critics of art Berenson's place is securely Olympian. But if most people think of him at all, they think of him as vaguely European and probably dead, whereas actually he has just produced something new.
Bernard Berenson is a frail, spirited, punctilious greybeard of 73 and a U. S. citizen. His...