Each November I visit the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston located on a shady edge of the Fenway greenway. It never disappoints. Named for the woman who built it and filled it with treasures, she was born in 1840 to a good New York family.  Her position allowed her education, travel and a marriage not then available to most.   Some unlucky events in her young marriage to Jack Gardner plunged her into depression, her loving and wise husband devised a course of world travel to restore her “joie de vivre”.   The first stop was Paris in 1875 where she bought beautiful clothes and jewels. Frivolous perhaps but this first trip ignited her passion for beauty, her young agile mind was hungry and she devoured world culture.  Her subjects were architecture, engineering, painting, sculpture, music, tapestry and object d’art, her classroom: Spain, Italy, Turkey, Egypt, Nubia, Palestine, Athens, Munich, Vienna and Nuremberg and the list grew with time.   Together they started collecting with velocity and care.  You wouldn’t want to be up against “Mrs. Jack” bidding for a tiny Giotto or Mantagna.

A Young Lady of Fashion 1460's, attributed to Paollo Uccello, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

It is alleged that she wouldn’t back down once her vision was locked, and for art so precious, money was never the issue.  Her tenacity was as fine as the works she won.  The collection is no less thrilling today, imagine it was born from the will and eye of one woman, one lifetime.