Theft

Thieves entered the E. B. Crocker Art Gallery at Sacramento, Cal., lifted from its gold frame Guido Reni's Entombment of Christ, and escaped. A craving for a forbidden smoke had lured the curator to an upper gallery; no trace of the thieves remained when a janitor discovered the theft.

The Entombment, valued at $500,000, is eight by ten inches in size, and believed by experts to be the model for a larger work never completed. That it was stolen at the instance of an art expert is indicated by the fact that a large reproduction of the picture in the same gallery was undisturbed. Other larger but less precious paintings were also found intact.

The Crocker gallery is the property of the City of Sacramento, having been given in 1885 by the widow of Judge E. B. Crocker, retired railway attorney and former California Supreme Court Justice. Mr. Crocker gathered the collection after the Franco-Prussian war and the stolen canvas was one among several world famous pictures for which Sacramento is noted. So great is the value of the Entombment that it will be difficult to market. The world will probably not see it again for many years.