"There is something in the very name of Florence that suggests refinement and pleasurable emotions," wrote Boston-born James Jackson Jarves, America's first real collector of Italian Renaissance art, in 1852. At the time, few Americans agreed with him. When his collection of 143 Pre-Raphaelite paintings was shown in New York in 1860, critics panned them decisively as "weak and fettered," "the crude expression of Genius grappling with superstition." Snorted one Victorian gallerygoer, viewing a Tuscan religious panel with a gold-leaf background: "More of these dd ridiculous Chinese paintings!"
A century has...
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