 During the 1850s, Jarves relocated to Florence, Italy where he served as the U.S. vice-consul and collected art.After other American museums refused to buy Jarves' collection, Yale University granted him a loan with the collection as collateral.When Jarves defaulted in 1871, the Yale University Art Gallery purchased 119 Italian paintings, spanning the centuries from the tenth to the seventeenth, for a price of $22,000 or $30,000.