Besides many valuable additions which have recently been made to the Fogg Art Museum collection recently the exhibition rooms themselves have been altered to provide for a more balanced and harmonious arrangement of the canvasses. By erecting two partitions, extending almost the width of the room, the long, flat wall space upon which the full effect of any single canvass was lost, has been broken up. The partitions have also made it practicable to bring together different schools and types of paintings as in the rooms of a larger gallery.
Of the important new acquisitions that one finds in the renovated gallery, the first and foremost is the significant, dignified, and simple "St. Dominic" of the rare artist, Guido da Sienna. A little to the right of this larger work is a small 14th Century painting of the Italian school representing the mourning over the body of Christ. It is a piece, brilliant of color and particularly striking in composition. Against the wall of the print room partition hangs the superb 17th Century Spanish painting of "St. Jerome" by Ribera. This recently purchased canvass was well known for years in the Portalis Collection. Before one passes into the print room, two Italian paintings, the gift of Mr. Bernhard Berenson '87, a distinguished art critic, attract the attention. These pictures were given by Mr. Berenson in recognition of the work that is being done at the Fogg Museum in building up a really notable collection.
Valuable Print of Durer
In the print room is found a series of important original drawings by old and modern masters. One of these is a portrait drawing, formerly known as the "Princess Hohenzollern," by Albrecht Durer, dated 1525. This portrait drawing, for the possession of which scores of museums and private collectors have been striving, is highly spoken of by Mr. Campbell Dodgson of the British Museum, and has been reproduced in Lippmann's work on Durer drawings. Significant also are the 16th Century drawings by Francois Clouet, and a set of four by Ingres and other leading draughtsmen of the 19th Century.
Other acquisitions which are as yet not on public exhibition, owing to the hopelessly inadequate exhibiting and working space of the museum, are pieces of early Persian pottery, and a Greek 4th Century, marble "Head of a Youth." The latter work has been known to collectors for a long time as one of the features of a notable private collection in Paris. From the same city is coming now, a 12th Century Romanesque capitol.
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