NEW MASTERPIECES FOR FOGG

Three new pictures are now being shown at the Fogg Art Museum. Two of these are likely to be temporary loans only, while the third, a Florentine so-called Cassone panel, is to be added to the permanent collection of the Museum. This picture represents, in fine composition and typically brilliant color, a favorite mythological theme, "The Judgment of Paris." It was recently reproduced in "Arts and Decoration," in an article by Professor Frank Mather of Princeton University. It was also published by Professor Schubring in his work on panels of this general character, and is attributed by him to the so-called "Paris master." The acquisition of this important picture is a valuable addition to the growing historical collection of Early Italian Paintings at the Fogg Museum.

The second is a Pesellino, an important and charming little work formerly in the collection of the Rev. Arthur F. Sutton of Brant Broughton, Lincolnshire, England, which reached this country only a few days ago.

Finally and perhaps most important of all is the splendid "Madonna and Child" by Fra Filippo Lippi, which has been sent up from New York as a loan, for a few days only. Dr. Osvald Siren, now visiting lecturer at Harvard, has made a study of this picture and says of it: "The Fra Filippo now on exhibition in the Fogg Museum is one of the master's most interesting works. It is of unusual artistic charm and historical importance. There are, as we know, only two paintings by this master in American collections. The one is the picture formerly in the Allessandri Palace, now in the Morgan Library, which unfortunately has been cut into three pieces; the other, which is at the Boston Museum, is an altar wing showing four Saints. The Fogg picture is consequently of unusual importance. It is of special interest for any collection of early Italian paintings, since Fra Filippo holds so significant a position in Florentine art, representing as he does the transition from late Gothic to early Renaissance. It belongs evidently to the master's latest period, and is in style closely connected with his frescoes in the Duomo at Spoleto, left unfinished at his death in 1469. I would thus be inclined to date the picture about the middle of the 60's. It is one of Fra Filippo's most pathetic conceptions. The Madonna is here conceived in a less gay and naturalistic spirit than is usual in his works. Indeed, it is filled with a deep, almost tragic spirit, reminding us of the greatest Madonna conceptions by Donatello. It is quite conceivable that Fra Filippo was influenced to a certain extent by Donatello, and he has in this picture reached a deeper and more sublime interpretation of the broad formula of human motherhood."

Professor G. H. Edgell '09, of the Fine Arts Department in the University, will hold a conference on these paintings in the Fogg Art Museum this afternoon at 3 o'clock.