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Kress, one fully in sympathy with his original, encyclopedic perspective.
The Italian had bought his title from Mussolini and sold extensively to
Goering throughout World War II. In bad standing with italy'S postwar
government, he was forced to turn to his arch rival, Bernard Berenson,
to help get himself out of hot water. Remaining in Italy during the war,
the sage of I Tatti may have conveniently converted to Catholicism to
save his Semitic skin and keep his holdings intact. Berenson's predictably
high price for effective intervention to keep the Count in business and
out of jail was fixed in
1950:
Contini-Bonacossi was to oust the world's
most brilliant scholar and connoisseur of Italian art-Roberto Longhi–
from his profitable role as the noble dealer's adviser. Berenson would
now receive the extensive Kress and other expertise fees previously lining
Longhi's scholarly pockets. The Foundation was also to contribute gen–
erously to republishing Berenson's
Opera Omnia
in handsome, accessi–
ble form. Though
Life Magazine
(1953)
claimed Kress had shelled out
more for art than any other American, in terms of earlier dollars' value
J.
P. Morgan probably outstripped him. Still, in its own way, the later gift
ranks with the greatest individual art donations in history. It comes very
close in spirit to that of another chi ldl ess donor, Grand Duchess Anna
Maria Ludovica, Electress Palatine and the Last of the Medici, who
bequeathed all her family's artistic heritage to Tuscany in
1743 .
Like most of the newly wea lth y, Sam Kress probably saw the Medici
as his role model. After all, that undistinguished middle-class Florentine
family had a modest start as moneylenders and as manufacturers in "the
rag trade," entering merchant banking to sell fine textiles throughout
Europe. Within little over a century the Medici rose to dizzying socia l
and political heights, boasting the cardinal's crimson, the papal tiara,
the grand ducal crown of Tuscany, and finally the crown of Europe's
wealthiest nation-France.
Starting as an elementary school teacher at seventeen, Sam soon had
to look after his six orphaned siblings and began a modest stationery
store at twenty-four, learning from his father, who ran a drugstore and
then two company stores for nearby mines. He soon bought out his
wholesaler in
1890.
Competing with the great Woolworth Five and Ten
Cent Store chain's profitable ways, he too opened such a store in Mem–
phis
(1896),
and another in Nashvi ll e. His Southern chain soon took
off, boasting eleven locations by
1900.
Selling his Pennsylvania stores, Sam branched out into slightly cost–
lier, better-made merchandise. He incorporated in
1907,
by then with
fifty-one stores selling over three million dollars annually. Thus his
chain exceeded the international Medici bank by appealing to a much
