"During her lifetime, Isabella Stewart Gardner (1840-1924) was at the heart of Boston's liveliest salon. Artists and thinkers gathered at Fenway Court around works by Giotto, Fra Angelico, Raphael, Titian, Rembrandt, and Vermeer. One hundred years after its opening, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum remains as innovative and individual as its creator. The embodiment of one women's vision, the museum speaks personally to all who enter." "In celebration of its centennial, the museum has commissioned new photographs and asked writers of our own time to go public with their private visions of the Gardner Museum. In this book, filled with 180 color plates, their voices are joined with those of Mrs. Gardner herself and her contemporaries, allowing readers to see the museum's most beloved works through the eyes of such thinkers as Henry James, Edith Wharton, Bernard Berenson, Charles Eliot Norton, Henry Adams, Okakura Kakuzo, Robert Campbell, Wayne Koestenbaum, Sister Wendy Beckett, and Henry Louis Gates Jr. We can read what artists such as John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Michelangelo, and Titian wrote about their works." "This volume offers the fascinating story of Mrs. Gardner and the evolution of one of the nation's most important art collections, the unfortunate victim of a theft in 1990. It also provides a delightful visual tour of the museum's architecture, gardens, and galleries, as well as insightful short essays on the major themes of the collection, from ancient to contemporary art."--BOOK JACKET.