I was to have all the finest

In the first decade of the twentieth century John Pierpont Morgan assembled a collection of Renaissance bronzes which rapidly became the most important of its kind in private hands. The collection, which until 1912 was on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum, was the result of joint efforts on the part of dealers, experts and Morgan himself to establish a record for the marketing, value and interpretation of Renaissance bronzes. In 1912 Morgan's entire collection was shipped to New York and while it was on exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it was dispersed. In order to analyse the cultural and economic implication of this transatlantic relocation, the article examines the making of Morgan's collection of Renaissance bronzes within the context of European connoisseurship, its reception in New York, its acquisition and dispersal by Joseph Duveen and its partial purchase by Henry C. Frick, a collector of profoundly different character.

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Business · Context (archaeology) · Exhibition · Interpretation (philosophy) · Metropolitan area · Order (exchange) · Portrait · Relocation · The Renaissance · Visual arts · Art History and Market Analysis · Historical Art and Culture Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History