Discovering the Trecento: American Mavericks in the market. Who, where, why and why not?
Anita F. Moskowitz
A quick survey of American collections reveals how few fourteenth-century works migrated across the Atlantic, even after the rediscovery of the “primitives”. While sales to Bode in Berlin, Courajod in Paris, and Robinson and Eastlake in England were robust, Americans lagged far behind. Why is that? Taking cues from the 1996 exhibition catalogue about patterns of collecting medieval art in America, I will explore the question of American ambivalence toward art in general, and toward the Middle Ages in particular.