The impetus for this online catalogue came from the exhibition A Passion for Perfection: The Straus Collection of Renaissance Art, in 2017, which gathered for the first time in several generations almost all of the works given to the Museum by Edith Abraham and Percy Selden Straus, Sr. Consisting of more than eighty works by European artists, primarily focused on the Renaissance in northern and southern Europe, the Straus Collection ranks among the finest private collections of Old Masters assembled in the early twentieth century in the United States.

The arrival of the Straus Collection at the very young Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, in 1944, was nothing short of a miracle. Open to the public for barely twenty years, the Museum was still in its infancy, with a small stub of a building, almost no funds for acquisitions, a part-time director and a miscellany of works of art on display. No one could have predicted the gift of one of New York City’s most refined collections of Old Master paintings and Renaissance bronzes, especially not the little-known collection assembled by Percy Selden Straus, a scion of New York retail royalty, Isidor Straus and Rosalie Ida Blun. It immediately boosted the standing of the Museum in the community, and encouraged any number of local collectors and future donations, from the fine European paintings acquired in subsequent years by Sarah Campbell Blaffer to the donation of two dozen paintings by Samuel H. Kress in 1961.

Percy S. Straus’s father, Isidor, and uncle, Nathan, had acquired R. H. Macy & Co., of New York, the nation’s largest department store, in 1896, having operated the glass and china department there since the end of the Civil War. Like other merchant princes of his era, such as Benjamin Altman and Samuel H. Kress, Percy Straus had a deep and abiding passion for European art. He delved deeply into art historical scholarship and developed into a fine connoisseur, who nonetheless sought the advice of the foremost authorities. At the time he collected, there was a growing consensus on both sides of the Atlantic as to what constituted the canon of Renaissance European painting and sculpture, an effort led by scholar Bernard Berenson and art dealer Joseph Duveen, and developed by scholars of the generation of Richard Offner and Wilhelm Valentiner. For his part, Straus insisted on sophisticated aesthetics and pristine condition. Because of this focus on condition, many of the paintings that he bought are small, since small works, often on panel, are more likely to have been spared the vicissitudes of time and transport than larger works on canvas. He acquired exemplary works by renowned artists but also outstanding works whose authors could not be named. Thus, two works of exceptional beauty by anonymous fourteenth-century Italian painters, the Master of the Straus Madonna and the Master of the Sienese Straus Madonna, are eponymous with the collection that holds their undisputed masterworks.

The choice of Houston as the repository of Straus Collection was determined by the move of their son Percy S. Straus, Jr., to Houston in 1939, following law school at Harvard and studies in Dijon, France, and Mexico City. His marriage to Lillian Marjorie Jester of Dallas in 1937 pointed the couple to Texas. The elder Strauses must have understood the exceptional value of giving the citizens of Houston the opportunity to enjoy the finest in European art, rather than following convention and donating their collection to one of the New York museums, which by then were rich with this material. The Strauses, although conspicuous New Yorkers, valued privacy, and their collection, installed in their Park Avenue apartment, was not widely known. Upon the collection’s arrival in Houston, the Museum published a small catalogue to accompany the collection’s installation, which opened in early 1945. Since then, it has received much scholarly attention, in particular by Richard Offner, Straus’s close adviser, and, much later, Carolyn C. Wilson, the author of Italian Paintings, XIV‒XVI Centuries, in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (1996). Some but not all of the Northern paintings were included by Edgar Peters Bowron and Mary Morton in Masterworks of European Painting in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2000). However, the collection’s fine sculptures, consisting of mostly Italian Renaissance bronzes, and works on paper have not been studied previously in depth. Our deepest thanks go to Jeremy Warren, honorary curator of sculpture, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and sculpture research curator, the National Trust, who undertook a thorough study of the sculptures that resulted in many new observations and insights.

This present catalogue is the first publication of the entire Straus Collection, and its digital format is designed to allow future research to be incorporated in order to keep the information current. We wish to thank the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for its generous financial support of this project. We are very grateful for the interest and support by several members of the Straus family, especially Bradford and Diane Straus, who have contributed greatly appreciated insights from a personal point of view. With her deep knowledge of all things pertaining to the extensive Straus family, Joan Adler, executive director of the Straus Historical Society, has made the family archives available to us and been an enthusiastic supporter. Independent researcher Maureen Chaouch added her insights into the Strauses’ collecting and contributed to the introduction of this catalogue.

Numerous scholars in the United States and in Europe have freely aided our research. First and foremost, we are indebted to Carolyn C. Wilson for sharing her profound knowledge of the Italian paintings. We deeply regret her passing before the catalogue’s completion. Our thanks go to Carl Brandon Strehlke, curator emeritus, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Sonia Chiodo, associate professor of art, Università delgi Studi Firenze, whose ongoing research was of invaluable help with the difficult question of the identity of the Master of the Straus Madonna and his relationship to Fra Angelico, and we also thank Angelo Tartuferi, former director of the Galleria dell’Accademia and present director of the Museum of San Marco, Florence, for his insights into this question. We are grateful to Enrico dal Pozzolo, member of the faculty of the Università di Verona and author of the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the paintings of Lorenzo Lotto, for his expertise. Susan Foister, deputy director and curator of Early Netherlandish, German, and British paintings at the National Gallery, London, generously shared her insights into the work of Hans Holbein the Younger with us, as did Guido Messling, curator of German painting, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Our research was further aided by Nicola Costaras, head of paintings conservation at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Martin Myrone of the Tate, London; Lelia Packer, curator of painting at the Wallace Collection, London; Francesca Leoni, curator of Islamic art, and Caroline Palmer, print room supervisor, at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Clare Mitchell and Rebecca Moison of the Southampton City Art Gallery; Giorgia Bottinelli, curator of historic art at the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery; and Jonny Yarker and Michael Tollemache, who provided important information regarding the work of Henry Raeburn. We further wish to thank John Oliver Hand, former curator of northern Renaissance paintings at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., for the information on Joos van Cleve he shared with us, and Edgar Peters Bowron, former Audrey Jones Beck Curator of European Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, for his many insights into the Straus Collection. Our research into the sculptures was greatly aided by Claudia Krysza-Gersch, curator of Renaissance and Baroque sculpture, at the Skulpturensammlung in Dresden, and Angelika Scholz of the Sammlung Preussischer Schlösser und Gärten, Berlin Brandenburg.

The 2017 exhibition and this catalogue were conceived by Helga Kessler Aurisch, curator of European art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She was joined by Michelle Packer, consulting curator for this project, and Dena Woodall, curator of prints and drawings. I congratulate them for completing this important publication of a foundational collection of the Museum. We are grateful to Heather Brand, head of publications, and Christine Waller Manca, senior editor, assisted by Megan Smith, senior editor, for their careful editing of the manuscript and the impressive resulting product. Thanks go to Meagan Dwyer, senior graphic designer, for creating the catalogue design. In the conservation department, we wish to thank David Bomford, the former Audrey Jones Beck Curator of European Art and chairman of the department of conservation; his successor, Per Knutås, head of conservation, and his team—Maite Leal, paintings conservator; Melissa Gardner, associate conservator of paintings; Jane Gillies, senior conservator of objects and sculpture; and Ingrid Seyb, associate conservator, objects and sculpture—who made many contributions. Thanks go to Zac Haines, chief technology officer, and his team, particularly Ryan Hanna and Dave Thompson. Our thanks go to the imaging department, under the guidance of Marty K. Stein, photographic and imaging services manager, and her team, especially Matthew Lawson, who provided the photographs of the Straus Collection. We extend gratitude to Kem Schultz, publications operations coordinator, and to Madison Rendall and Jenny Dally, curatorial assistants, who assisted in innumerable ways.

Gary Tinterow

Director, The Margaret Alkek Williams Chair

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston