On November 12th and 13th, The Frick Collection’s Center for the History of Collecting in America held its eighth symposium A Market for Merchant Princes: Collecting Italian Renaissance Paintings in America. The over-subscribed event bespoke of immense interest in the history of collecting, a burgeoning new field of study, especially in the United States. It also attested to contemporary taste in the Old Masters, especially Italian Renaissance paintings and sculptures.

No fewer than a dozen prominent institutional and independent scholars shared their critical and historical research ranging on topics from: the mid 19th century collector-dealer James Jackson Jarves to the spirited Isabella Stewart Gardner and her connoisseur-in-arm Bernard Berenson as well as the likes of J.P. Morgan, Samuel H. Kress and, yes, John Ringling of the iconic American Circus fame.

Inge Reist, the Center’s Director presented every speaker during all three sessions: The Lure of Italy: Art and the Market before Bernard Berenson; The Ubiquitous BB; and, A Taste of One’s Own: A New American Renaissance.

DOWNLOAD: Report on The Frick Symposium on Collecting Itailan Renaissance Paintings (3.8 MB)