Harvard's / Tatti

When famed Art Critic Bernard Berenson (Harvard '87) died last autumn at 94, he left his alma mater one of the world's great altars to art--his own legendary villa, / Tatti* nestled in the Tuscan hills near Florence. Last week Harvard formally accepted the $1,000,000 estate, launched plans to fulfill Berenson's dream of making / Tatti a humanistic-studies center for scholars of all nations. Next year Harvard hopes to begin sending up to 20 scholars at a time to the 40-room villa, which Berenson called "a library with living rooms attached," and there let them muse amid the old man's 50,000 books, his Renaissance paintings, fastidious furnishings and vast formal gardens. But carrying out the scheme, which may include endowment of a new Harvard chair, will take another $2,000,000.

At week's end, Harvard planned a quiet solicitation among Critic Berenson's loyal friends, who know most about the style in which he hoped Harvard would carry on.

* Built in 1724 and named after an ancient nearby flour mill called / Tatti. The word has no other meaning.

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