Letters, business records, diary, and photographs.
REEL 380-413: Primarily correspondence, mostly Gardner's own, but including family correspondence and Gardner Museum correspondence.
REELS 631-632: Personal papers of Gardner and some records of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum including dealers' files containing invoices, notes, cancelled checks, and letters; a record book, "Prices Paid for Paintings," 1917; a record book, "Prices Paid for Works of Art"; 118 installation photographs of the museum as arranged by Gardner, 1924; a diary kept in Egypt, 1874, with sketches; a diary kept in Shanghai and India, 1883-1884; "Directions for my funeral," 1912; and "Suggestions for Running a Museum," 1913.
REELS 696-698: Letters from Bernard Berenson to Gardner, 1887-1924. Letters contain references to literary topics, Berenson's impressions of Europe, various paintings and artists, advice to Gardner on the purchase of paintings and information on their sale.
REEL 846: Checklist of Gardner's letters to Bernard and Mary Berenson, 1894-1924; typescripts of personal and official correspondence (originals found on AAA microfilm reels 696-698), 1887-1924.
Biographical / Historical:
Isabella Stewart Gardner was an art patron, collector, and museum founder in Boston, Mass. Immediately after graduation from Harvard, Bernard Berenson was hired by Gardner to travel throughout Italy collecting Italian Renaissance art for her recreated Venetian palazzo in Boston. She established her palazzo as a museum of fine European art with stipulations that after her death none of the exhibited works was to be moved or rearranged, but left as she had designed during her lifetime.
Provenance:
Microfilm lent by Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum for duplicating, 1972-1975.
Restrictions:
The Archives of American art does not own the original papers. Use is limited to the microfilm copy.
Occupation:
Art patrons -- Massachusetts -- Boston Search this
Topic:
Art -- Collectors and collecting -- Massachusetts -- Boston Search this
Art, Renaissance -- Massachusetts -- Boston Search this
Stephen Kovalyak, George Stout and Thomas Carr Howe transporting Michelangelo's sculpture Madonna and child, 1945 July 9. Thomas Carr Howe papers, 1932-1984. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Die Plastik der Renaissance und des Frühbarock im nördlichen Spanien: Aragón, Navarra, die baskischen Provinzen un die Rioja, von Georg Weise, unter Mitwirkung von Ingrid Kreuzer, geb. Ossmann
Duveen sculpture in public collections of America; a catalogue raisonné with illustrations of Italian renaissance, sculptures by the great masters, which have passed through the House of Duveen
Donatello at close range : an initial view of the restoration of the stuccoes in the Old Sacristy, S. Lorenzo, Florence / by Fabrizio Bandini ... [et al.] ; with introduction by Caroline Elam
Italian sculpture of the middle ages and period of the revival of art. A descriptive catalogue of the works forming the above section of the museum, with additional illustrative notices. By J. C. Robinson. Published for the Science and art department of the Committee of Council on education
