Career
After attending Helsinki University, he went to Italy, where he gained an intimate knowledge of Italian art. In 1922 he was appointed professor of the history of art at University College, London, having lectured there since 1914. He was secretary to the mission which notified Western European countries of the independence of Finland in 1918. He was appointed secretary to the Finnish delegation at the Economic Conference in London in 1933. From 1940 to 1945 he was managing director and honorary acting editor of the Burlington Magazine. Among Borenius' principal works are The Painters of Vicenza (1909), Four Early Italian Engravers (1923), English Primitives (1924), Forty London Statues (1926), English Mediaeval Paintings (with F. W. Tristman) (1927), Florentine Frescoes (1930), St. Thomas Becket in Art (1932), English Painting in the XVIIIth Century (1938), Italian Painting and Later Italian Painting (1945), Dutch Indoor Subjects (1946), and Sienese Paintings (1946).