PADUAN SCHOOL, late 15th Century

The Collection of the Late Paul and Helen Bernat Paul Bernat was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1902, of Jewish descent. His family emigrated to the United States the following year. Mr. Bernat's father, Emile, was an expert tailor and was quickly employed by the Textile Department of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts as a tapestry restorer, thus establishing the Bernat family's first links to this world-class institution. When natural dyed yarn became unavailable during the First World War, Emile and his two eldest sons, Eugene, a chemist and Paul, a business major at Harvard College, began a yarn company, Emile Bernat & Sons. Mr. Paul Bernat, who had entered Harvard at sixteen, left at the end of his sophmore year in order to work for the company full time. He nevertheless maintained close ties to the University throughout his life, serving on the Overseers' Committee of the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilization and contributing generously to the Arnold Arboretum, where he played as a child, as well as to the Fogg Museum. Most notably, for many summers, he and his wife, Helen Bernat (who would later be a Vice President of the Boston MFA), hosted the International Summer Seminars organized by Professor Henry Kissinger, aimed at fostering international understanding through bringing together scholars, professionals, and students from around the world. Like his older brother, Eugene, whose collection of early Chinese ceramics was sold at a record-breaking auction in 1984, Paul became interested in art collecting at an early age. Indeed, his family still proudly displays his first acquisition, a 19th Century Minton figure of Miranda, purchased for a dollar when he was twelve years old (estimated value today, $500). Mr. Bernat's interest in the Far East also began unusually early with a Harvard course in Buddhist thought. Like Eugene, Paul made Chinese ceramics the centerpiece of his collection. However, in order not to compete with his brother (and as a function of his own aesthetic taste), he chose to concentrate on 18th-century Imperial porcelains, which he admired for their highly refined beauty and technical perfection. Because Qing porcelain was a largely ignored field when he began, he was able, through rigorous selection to build a collection that, according to Wu Tong of the MFA's Department of Asian Art, ranked with the reknowned collections of Henry Knight and Sir Percival David. In 1983 he was nominated among America's all-time 100 top collectors by Connoisseur magazine on the basis of this collection. Yet Paul Bernat's porcelains, which were auctioned in 1989, after his death, were only the best-known element within an exceedingly diverse and complex group of objects. Less known is the fact that Mr. Bernat had a second major interest in Old Master Drawings and displayed the same perspicacity and avant garde-taste in collecting them that he did when collecting Chinese ceramics. If he was drawn to the impersonal perfection of the 18th-century imperial porcelains, then it was the opposite qualities of warmth, spontaneity, and thoughtfulness that appealed to him in this very different, far more intimate art form. From the beginning, Mr. Bernat established close connections with Museum curators, always following a similar pattern in building his collection. He would seek out the best dealers, buying Asian works first through Mathias Komor in New York City and later through C.T. Loo and Frank Caro. In drawings, he particularly valued the opinion of Mr. James Byam Shaw at the time when this great connoisseur worked at Colnaghi's in London. Mr. Bernat's visits to New York and London would result in long conferences at the MFA with Mr. Kojiro Tomita of the Asiatic Art Department and Mr. Jan Fontaine, the Museum director, and with Mr. Alan Rossiter, Ms. Eleanor Sayre and Mr. Clifford Ackley, in the Department of Prints and Drawings. He would discuss prospective purchases with the appropriate specialist and, though his own eye served him well, the advice he received often had a determining effect on his decision. As his strong support of the Museum's Research Laboratory suggests - where, after retiring from business, he spent many of his most satisfying hours - he had learned that no matter how good, the eye alone was not to be trusted. As a result of these discussions, some objects would be bought directly for the Museum, some would reside for a while with Mr. and Mrs. Bernat, only to be donated later, and some would remain within the collection, and some, of course, would not be bought at all. Among the drawings he presented to the MFA were works by Carracci, Ghezzi, Samacchini, Damini, Gandolfi, and Jacque. Mr. Bernat also helped facilitate the Museum's purchase of a Tiepolo, bought at the same time as the Tiepolo featured in this sale. Like the gallery named in his and his wife's honor in 1990, and like the many Asian works of art he donated to the Museum, these drawings are tangible reminders of his and his family's profound commitment to the public enjoyment of art. The selection of drawings offered here has been made in order to give a fuller image of Paul Bernat's catholic taste. The collector's mark illustrated below, which has been applied to all of Mr. and Mrs. Bernat's drawings, whether they are in this sale or not, will help keep the memory of their collection alive.

Details

PADUAN SCHOOL, late 15th Century

Figures sacrificing at an Altar: Study of an Antique Relief

with inscription 'dil Mantenga'; black chalk, pen and brown ink, on vellum, the corners made up, pricked for transfer
6½ x 11¼in. (167 x 285mm.)

Provenance

Francesco Calzolari
Conte Lodovico Moscardo
with Matthiessen
with P. & D. Colnaghi

Lot Essay

The present drawing is a copy of the marble relief called the Suovetaurilia Procession, now in the Louvre, known in Rome since the end of the 15th Century, P.P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture, Oxford, 1986, no. 190, illustrated. This relief was probably in the collection of Cardinal Domenico Grimani in the Palazzo San Marco in Venice. It was given to the Library of San Marco in 1589 where it was displayed over the door of the Statuario Pubblico. It was removed to the Louvre by Napoleon in 1797. The face of the tall priest was so damaged that it frequently was confused during the Renaissance with the figure of a woman. Copies of the relief are known by Aspertini in the British Museum, by anonymous Italian hands at Bayonne, in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and in the Duperac Album in the Louvre