Maud Cruttwell

[5][6] In the words of Carlo Ginzburg, using the Morellian method, the art historian operates in the manner of a detective, "each discovering, from clues unnoticed by others, the author in one case of a crime, in the other of a painting".

[7] Cruttwell's subsequent works on artists all "open with a chapter on the 'characteristics' of the old master in question, a procedure that discloses her allegiance to the 'scientific method' of connoisseurship" and which clearly displays her as a disciple of Morelli and Berenson.

[15] In 1907 Cruttwell wrote to the Berensons that she was writing her final book on art, on Donatello (eventually published in 1911), as she intended to relocate to Paris and pursue "modern journalism".

[16] Cruttwell was associated with some notable feminist and lesbian personalities of her period; apart from Paget and Mary Berenson, she was a regular correspondent of Ottoline Morell, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.

"[19] Cruttwell died in Paris on 25 April 1939; her obituary in The Times noted that her books on Italian artists, though written "many years ago [...] are still valued as standard works.

"[18] In recent years interest in Cruttwell has rekindled as part of the growing recognition of the work of female art scholars from the late 19th century onwards.