PAINTINGS BEFORE 1700 ARE LISTED IN FOGG CATALOGUE

"Mediaeval and Renaissance Paintings" is the title of the first Fogg Art Museum Catalogue ever issued, which goes on sale Wednesday morning. The volume, which contains upwards of 400 pages of reading matter and heliotype illustrations, to the number of 66, is quarto size, sumptuously bound in heavy board with a rich cloth back, and consists chiefly of a careful index of the primitive and Renaissance paintings dating before 1700, which may be seen at the Museum. The book, which is a publication of the Harvard University Press, will be available at the Co-operative Society and other bookstores.

The catalogue has been in the complete charge of E. W. Forbes '95, Director of the Fogg Art Museum. In the book has been included a series of articles by members of the museum staff, dealing will Byzantine and Primitive Art, including Early Italian, Florentine, North Italian, and Venetian. The early development of painting in France, Flanders, Germany, Spain, and England has also been briefly discussed in short introductions to the sections devoted to these countries.

A detailed index has been compiled of all the Primitives in the Fogg Collection. In a few exceptional instances works have been included in the lists which, while not the permanent possessions of the Museum, are nevertheless available there for a large part of the year, or are in the nature of permanent loans.

Unusually Clear Illustrations.

The illustrations are reproduced from the originals by a special heliotype process. Their unusual clearness of detail and the richness of their modelling make this survey an attractive book for the general public interested in early painting, as well as an indispensable one for students and collectors. The painstaking notes on certain incomplete art treasures of which parts are housed in various European collections will make the book particularly valuable for foreign museums, and furnish a convenient summary of the chief works of interest of the period. Due to the inclusion also of the results of scholarly research on the subject of pigments and similar details of technique, the book will prove its worth to the practising artist.

Inasmuch as the present volume indexes only a small part of the Museum's possessions, it is likely that other catalogs will be compiled shortly. Contained in the list of important collections never yet adequately recorded are the Chinese and Japanese prints, a small number of classical originals, and a considerable assemblage of Turners, Ruskins and modern water-colors and drawings.