Pietro Annigoni: Bernard Berenson

Ink drawing of Bernard Berenson
by Pietro Annigoni

Before Pietro Annigoni began the portrait the Queen Elizabeth, he returned to Florence and there, as he writes, "gave myself up to painting landscapes and a self-portrait, the one I call 'Gulliver.' I also made a pen and ink drawing of Bernard Berenson, the famous art historian, as he lay ill in bed at him home. When it was finished he looked at it and said, 'In this portrait I am impressive, a personality to be taken seriously. Other people in general, yes, they have taken me seriously. I, never.'

Over the last twelve years of his life BB, as everyone called him, was a good friend to me. We had first met in 1947 when, flatteringly, he had asked, through mutual friends, to meet me. He must have been already eighty then. Later, he supported me when I was campaigning against the reckless cleaning of Old Master paintings in the great museums and art galleries of the world. We shared also, to a great extent, the same feelings about the excesses of much so-called modern art. As a clever businessman, he liked to keep in with everyone, but in private he was very outspoken. One night at 'I Tatti,' his beautiful villa near Settignano, he interrupted some of his guests who were talking about certain abstract painters: 'Stop talking about abstract art, it's so tedious.'

After I had been to India in 1957, he asked me to show him the drawings I had made of Indian scenes - twenty large watercolours and five albums of sketches. Later that same year I saw him again and showed him a colour transparency of the portrait of Princess Margaret that I had just finished. 'I enjoy you,' he said. I envy you your talent, your youth, what you have done, and what you will be able to do.' And he added, 'I don't say this only to your face, I tell it to everyone.' Unaccustomed as I was, and still am, to even a little praise from the intellectuals, I cherish those words, his last to me."

To be continued 

(Excerpted from "Pietro Annigoni: An Artist's Life" by Pietro Annigoni, 1977.)