IMPORTANT 15TH CENTURY PAINTING AT FOGG MUSEUM

The Fogg Art Museum has just received from an anonymous lender in New York an important fifteenth century oil and tempera painting, "A Crucifixion," attributed by Mr. Bernhard Berensen to the great Umbrian painter, Pietro Dei Franceschi, called Piero Della Francesca. The picture comes from the collection of the Colonna family in Rome, and was formerly in that of the Doria family in Milan.

Piero Della Francesca, who was born about 1406 at Borga San Sepulcro, a city situated between Arezzo and Urbino, and who died in 1492, was one of the leading painters of the Umbrian school. Piero, besides being a painter of distinction, is said to have been thoroughly educated in mathematics. In 1439 he was apprenticed to Domenico Veneziano, and assisted him in painting the Chapel of Sant' Egidio in Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. His most important extant series of frescoes are those in the choir of San Francesco, in Arezzo, depicting the History of the Cross.

The picture is extremely beautiful in color, and Mr. Berenson believes that it bears favorable comparison with the famous Arezzo frescoes. It will be on exhibition at the Fogg Art Museum for about a week.

Professor G. H. Edgell '09, of the Fine Arts Department, will give a conference on this picture this afternoon at 3.30 o'clock.