Harvard Research Fellow Discovers Lost Work by Casanova in Lyons--Old Masterpiece is Valued at 1,000,000 Francs

According to information obtained yesterday, a valuable and important painting by the well known artist Francois Casanova was discovered accidentally some weeks ago by P. H. Harris '28, Rogers and Sheldon Fellow for researches in Italy in Romance Languages.

This canvas, valued at a million francs, had been presented to the town of Lyons many years ago by Cardinal Fesch, uncle of Napoleon, and subsequently had disappeared from sight. It was discovered by Mr. Harris and a British associate, Dr. Cornelius Ver Heyden de Lancey, among a pile of old rubbish in a small room in the Military School at Lyons, where it had lain unnoticed for half a century.

Considerable of the interest aroused by the find was due to the fact that the cracked and battered old picture, on being thoroughly renovated and cleaned, was found contrary to general tradition not to represent the Battle of Fribourg but some entirely different combat, which has yet to be identified. Casanova was a celebrated painter of battle scenes who lived in the latter part of the eighteenth century. The picture in question originally belonged to the Conde family, later passed into the hands of Cardinal Fesch, and finally was given to the Lyons Museum who in turn loaned it to the hospital where it has lain forgotten for several decades.

Dr. de Lancey for many years has devoted himself to researches on the great military painter and is at present preparing a book by which he hopes to place Casanova in his proper position among his contemporaries of the eighteenth century. Harris has recently been collaborating with him, and both were feted by the town of Lyons on the discovery. The two collectors have also been recommended to the French government for recognition.