The predominant financier of his time, J. Pierpont Morgan, Sr. (1837-1913), set the trend for utilizing Italian Renaissance Revival models in his library and art museum designed c. 1905 by Charles Follen McKim of the New York firm McKim, Mead, and White. (See Illustration 5) Kahn deeply admired the work of this firm and is known to have studied their designs while in New York City. [4] White derived the Morgan design from a garden elevation of the Italian architect Giacomo Vignola's (1507-1573) Villa Farnese at Caprarola, a site well-known to American architects of the time touring the Roman Campagna. (It is thought that Kahn also toured here in 1919.) [5]

As at the Clements, the Morgan front façade features a three-part organization, with an arched central loggia sheltering the main entrance. Each façade has a minimal, restrained decorative scheme, highlighted by only a few medallions and a modest stepped parapet above the front door which bears the inscribed name of the institution. Each façade also possesses sculptural decorations above openings on the fenestration. The Clements is far simpler, however, lacking the complex construction details and asymmetrical composition, additional attic story, balustrade on the parapet, and much subtler carved details of the Morgan Library.

Other, later commissions for small art museums, both on and off university campuses, followed the Morgan Library's use of the Italian Renaissance Revival Style, designs Kahn undoubtedly studied before starting work on the Clements. McKim, Mead and White's Butler Art Institute (Youngstown, OH, 1917-1918) (See Illustration 6) and Cass Gilbert's Allen Art Museum at Oberlin College (Oberlin, Ohio 1918) (See Illustration 7) were two cases in point. Soon after 1917, Kahn probably traveled to Youngstown to visit his brother and former associate, Julius, who operated a steel business there, and would have taken any opportunity to see a work by McKim, Mead, and White in town.

Kahn clearly derived much of his composition from the Butler Museum (which itself owed a debt to the Morgan Library), as they share fundamental similarities of scale, ornamentation, and fenestration. The Allen Art Museum, while much larger and decoratively complex than the Clements, also possesses the central arched loggia and aediculae of the Michigan library. These well-known designs undoubtedly helped to convince Kahn of the appropriateness of Italian Renaissance Revival styling for his new commission.

4. Hildebrand, p. 18 Also footnote the Maryland Academy of Science article praising McKim, Mead, and White.

5. Ibid., p. 135