Uploaded June 2021 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Belle da Costa Greene, the Morgan Library’s long-time librarian and pathbreaking inaugural director, attracted considerable attention both in the press and from her many admirers and aquaintances. Among them was the Italian Renaissance art historian, scholar, and connoisseur Bernard Berenson (1865–1959). Following their introduction in early 1908, Greene and Berenson maintained a decades-long epistolary relationship (which occasionally became more intimate than letter-writing). Though Greene destroyed Berenson’s letters to her (as she did all her personal papers and correspondence before her death), hers to him remain at I Tatti, the former home of Bernard and his wife, Mary, on the outskirts of Florence, now the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. These letters, which span the period February 1909 to March 1949, constitute by far the most substantial surviving archive of personal papers associated with Greene. In this video, members of the Morgan staff explain what it means to have access to these artifacts of Belle’s life.
Belle da Costa Greene, the Morgan Library’s long-time librarian and pathbreaking inaugural director, attracted considerable attention both in the press and from her many admirers and aquaintances. Among them was the Italian Renaissance art historian, scholar, and connoisseur Bernard Berenson (1865–1959). Following their introduction in early 1908, Greene and Berenson maintained a decades-long epistolary relationship (which occasionally became more intimate than letter-writing). Though Greene destroyed Berenson’s letters to her (as she did all her personal papers and correspondence before her death), hers to him remain at I Tatti, the former home of Bernard and his wife, Mary, on the outskirts of Florence, now the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. These letters, which span the period February 1909 to March 1949, constitute by far the most substantial surviving archive of personal papers associated with Greene. In this video, members of the Morgan staff explain what it means to have access to these artifacts of Belle’s life.
