Louis Palma di Cesnola

    GEN. DI CESNOLA DIES
        AFTER SHORT ILLNESS
Director of Metropolitan Museum
  of Art for Twenty-five Years.
   MADE CYPRIOTE COLLECTION
Honored for Gallant Service in Civil
War--Also Veteran of Austrian
      and Crimean Wars.

 Gen. Louis Palma Di Cesnola, Director
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art since
1879, died suddenly and after a very short
illness on Sunday night at his residence,
the Hotel Seymour, 44 West Forty-fifth
Street. After his usual day's work at the
museum on Friday the General attended the
dinner of the Eleventh Corps in the
evening, and left the banquet hall apparent-
ly in his usual health. But on Saturday
morning he had an attack of Asthma, from
which he had been a sufferer for some
years. This acute attack was probably the
result of a cold caught at the banquet. His
family physician, Dr. Carlo Savini, ad-
vised the General to remain in his room
throughout the day. His daughter, Miss
Louise Di Cesnola, summoned her sister,
Mrs. Alfred Del Cambre, and they were
with him when at 10 o'clock on Sunday
evening he had a sinking spell, from which
he never recovered.
 On Sunday when he gradually became
weaker he expressed the hope that he
would be able to live until the end of the
week, by which time, he had been informed,
the Grand Cross of St. Maurice and Laz-
arra, granted to him be King Humbert of
Italy in recognition of his services in aiding
to restore the restoration of the cope of
Ascoli, which had been stolen and sold to
J. Pierpont Morgan, would get here.
 Gen. Di Cesnola's funeral will be attend-
ed from St. Patrick's Cathedral on Wednes-
day, when the Italian Ambassador to this
country and the members of his staff will
come to this city to attend, they having
been notified of the General's death yester-
day morning. The Directors of the Metro-
politan Museum will act as pallbearers.
The interment will be in the Kenisco Cem-
etery, where Gen. Di Cesnola's wife is
buried. Mrs. Di Cesnola was the daughter
of the late Commodore S.C. Reid of the
United States Navy, who is known in his-
tory as "the hero of Faval."
 Gen. Di Cesnola was a native of Rivarola,
Piedmont, Italy, where he was born June
28, 1832. When but seventeen years of age
he entered the army, serving through the
Italian war against Austria and receiving
his commission as a Lieutenant on the
battlefield of Novara for personal bravery
in March, 1849. At the close of the war he
completed his education at the Military
Academy at Cherasea, after which he
served in the Crimean war.
 He came to this country in 1860, and after
teaching French and Italian, entered the
United States service as an instructor in
tactics and cavalry drill. He raised a com-
pany of Italians for service here and was
appointed Major of the Eleventh New York
Cavalry, serving afterward as its Lieuten-
ant Colonel, and then receiving a commis-
sion as Colonel of the Fourth New York
Cavalry, with which he served to the close
of the war, save for nine months he spent
as a prisoner of war in Libby Prison. It
was while there that he planned an upris-
ing of prisoners at Libby and Belle Isle, at
about the time of Col. Rose's successful
attempt at tunneling out of the prison.
 Gen. Di Cesnola was wounded at the bat-
tle of Aldie, Va., and in 1897 he got a
medal of honor from Congress. At the
close of the war President Lincoln prom-
ised him a promotion to the grade of Briga-
dier General, and, though the commission
was never made out, owing to the death of
the President, he was always greeted with
the title promised him.
 President Lincoln appointed Gen. Di Ces-
nola Consul to Larnica, in the Island of
Cyprus. It was while he served in this
capacity from 1865 to 1877 that the excava-
tions of Cypriote antiquities were made and
the collection gathered on which his fame
principally rests. His one book, published
in 1878, "Cyprus, Its Ancient Cities, Tombs,
and Temples," treated of his work that led
to the establishment of what is now known
as the Cesnola collection, housed in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, a building
that is very largely his monument, for it
was the purchase of that collection that
was the beginning of the city's present
museum. The collection was brought here
after Sudan had made impossible its pur-
chase by the Emperor Louis Napoleon, and
after the British Museum had failed to buy
because of a lack of ready funds.
 Gen. Di Cesnola became a Trustee of the
museum and its Secretary on June 21, 1877,
becoming its Director two years later. Sev-
eral attempts have been made to secure his
removal from the post, but the Trustees,
after a hearing on charges made against
him that he had manipulated the Cypriote
collection so as to destroy its usefulness
from an art standpoint, acquitted him. This
led to the suit for libel brought against him
by Gustave Feuardent, the trial of which
was a veritable sensation in art circles in
the early eighties. The trial resulted in a
disagreement of the jury, since which time
the then animated discussion over the value
of the Di Cesnola collection has been heard
little of.
 Gen. Di Cesnola received the degree of
Doctor of Laws from both Columbia and
Princeton. He was also the recipient of a
gold medal and various knightly honors
from King Victor Emmanuel of Italy. He
was an active or associate member of vari-
ous scientific and archeological societies
here and abroad, and the author of several
pamphlets dealing with art subjects.

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