Page:Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography Volume 1.pdf/1104

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
CIR
1044
CLA

for private collections. He spent the greater part of his life at Città di Castello, and painted there some of his best pictures. Among these the most admired was "the Conception" at the Conventuali. He returned to Rome in the pontificate of Urban VIII., and was employed in several of the churches. He died in 1620.—W. T.

CIRCIGNANI, Niccolò, called Dalle Pomarance or Il Pomarancio. This painter was born at Pomarance in Tuscany in 1516. He studied painting at Rome. His master is supposed to have been Titi. He was employed in the pontificate of Gregory XIII. in the great saloon of the Belvedere. He grew old in Rome, says Lanzi, and left there numerous specimens of the labours of his pencil, which he employed with freedom and at a good price. He showed himself superior to the painters of his day in some of his works, as in the cupola of S. Prudenziana. He died about 1591.—W. T.

CIRILLO, Domenico, in Latin Cyrillus, a Neapolitan medical man, was born at Grugno in 1734, and died at Naples in 1799. In early youth he was elected to the chair of botany on the death of Professor Pedillo. He travelled extensively, visiting Germany, France, and Britain. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and received distinguished marks of attention in Paris from Buffon, D'Alembert, and Diderot. He became afterwards professor of medicine at Naples, but still continued to prosecute botany, and to publish works on that science. Towards the end of the eighteenth century he became involved in political matters, and was elected by the people their representative under the republic, and afterwards a member, and president of the legislative assembly. He was afterwards put in prison, and condemned to death by Ferdinand, in spite of the remonstrances of Admiral Lord Nelson. He appears to have been a man of great intelligence, and to have possessed good powers of observation. His botanical writings include an "Introduction to the Study of Botany;" "Elementary Botanical Plates;" "An account of the Plants of Naples;" and a treatise "On the Papyrus." He also wrote "On the Insects of Naples;" "On the Manna of Calabria;" "On the Rudiments of Nosology," and "On the Tarantula."—J. H. B.

CISNER, Nicholas, a learned Lutheran, pupil of Bucer and Melancthon, filled various chairs in the university of Heidelberg. He was born at Mosbach in the palatinate in 1529, and died in 1583. His works, which are numerous and learned, consist of dissertations on subjects of law, history, politics, and philology.

CISNEROS, Francisco Ximenez de. See Ximenez.

CITTADINI, Pier Francesco, called Il Milanese. This painter was born at Milan about 1616, and was educated in the school of Guido. He seems to have been a creditable pupil, and his "Stoning of St. Stephen," "Christ in the Garden," "the Flagellation," and "Ecce Homo" in the church of St. Stefano, and "S. Agata," in the church of that saint, were highly applauded. Yet he suddenly dropt from these high flights into a much humbler walk of art, and devoted himself to careful renderings of fruits, flowers, dead game, and still life. Many of his productions of this kind are in the collections of Bologna. He died in 1681.—W. T.

CIVERCHIO, Vincenzo: this painter was born at Crema in the state of Venice. He flourished from 1500 to 1535, and had a threefold reputation as a painter, an engraver, and an architect. He was chiefly famed for his portraits. He resided at Milan, and educated several pupils for that school of painting. Vasari praises his frescos very highly. In the great church of Crema was a picture by him of the Annunciation, but his most famous work representing "Justice and Temperance" was seized upon by the French in their capture of Crema, and presented to Francis I. He died about 1540.—W. T.

* CIVIALE, Jean, a French surgeon, born in 1792 at Thiezac (Cantal), the discoverer of a method of dispensing with the dangerous operation of lithotomy, which he has described in a work published at Paris in 1826—"De la Lithotritie ou broiement de la pierre dans la vessie."—J. S., G.

CIVILIS, Claudius, or Julius, the leader of the Batavi, a Celtic tribe, who revolted from Rome a.d. 69-70, was of the race of the Batavian kings. His brother, Julius Paulus, was put to death a.d. 67 or 68, and he himself was sent in chains to Nero at Rome. He afterwards became prefect of a cohort, but in this position made himself obnoxious to the army of Vitellius, and with difficulty escaped with his life. The misconduct of the Roman officers in Gaul and Germany made it an easy task for Civilis to rouse his countrymen against their masters; and accordingly, under pretence of supporting the cause of Vespasian, he assembled an army, and gave battle to the generals of Vitellius, who were completely defeated. Civilis, however, continued in open revolt after the death of Vitellius. He was defeated in a.d. 70. by Petilius Cerealis. What became of him afterwards is not certainly known.—J. S., G.

CIVININI, Giovanni Domenico, an Italian botanist, lived during the first half of the eighteenth century. He published at Florence a work on the history and nature of coffee.—J. H. B.

CIVITALI, Matteo, a distinguished Italian sculptor and architect, who achieved all his success after he was thirty, having till that age followed the trade of a barber, apparently without the least consciousness of his genius for art. Specimens of his art are to be seen in his native city Lucca and at Genoa, which for beauty of composition may be compared with the works of the foremost sculptors of the fifteenth century. He was born in 1435, and died in 1501.—J. S., G.

CIVOLI. See Cardi.

CLAGETT, William, an English theologian, was born at St. Edmundsbury in 1646; died in 1688. He was successively rector of Farnham, and chaplain to James II. His principal works are—"Difference of the case between the separation of Protestants from the Church of Rome and the separation of Dissenters from the Church of England," London, 1683; "The State of the Church of Rome when the Reformation began, as it appears by the advices given to Popes Paul III. and Julius III. by creatures of their own."—J. T.

CLAGETT, Nicholas, brother of the preceding, born in 1654, was for forty-six years preacher at St. Edmundsbury. He died in 1726, leaving "A Persuasive to an ingenuous Trial of Opinions in Religion," 4to, London, 1685; "Truth Defended," &c., 8vo, London, 1710.—J. T.

CLAIRAUT, Alexis Claude, born in Paris in 1713; died in 1765. In our more modern times there are three great and classical epochs as to mathematical science. The first was filled by the achievements, the fame, and the power of Newton, Leibnitz, and the Bernoullies. Following them we have the great triumvirate Euler, D'Alembert, and Clairaut; to which succeeded the reign of Lagrange and Laplace. Genius did not indeed terminate on the death of Laplace, but the reign of ancient methods certainly terminated then. We have had since Abel and Jacobi; Gauss, and our own Hamilton—the last, the sole survivor, and perhaps the real inaugurator of the coming and not feebly indicated era. During that early triumvirate, in which, as regards taste in composition and its accompanying quickness of perception, Clairaut occupies no inferior rank, the grand problem was the problem of perturbations. And Montucla is correct in saying that Clairaut was the first who had the courage to attack with requisite boldness, and in a mode sufficiently general, the purely dogmatical problem—Three bodies, the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon, being cast into space, at given distances, and with given velocities and matter, and attracting each other according to the Newtonian law; it is required to determine the curve, which one of them—say the Moon—must describe around the Earth? Clairaut wrote on every question of astronomical physics that had been cast up at that time. He wrote better than any contemporary on the "Figure of the Earth." It is still most pleasant to read his volume on "Curves of Double Curvature," and his elementary book on Geometry is in many respects a model. Clairaut was no insignificant form in the midst of the "great world" of Paris. He lived in times that preluded the great Revolution—when "territorial constitutions" had come to be at discount.—J. P. N.

CLAIRON, Claire-Joseph-Hippolyte Legris de Latude, a famous French actress, was born in French Flanders in 1723, and died in Paris in 1803. She was for a long period the chief ornament of the Theatre français. Her name occurs frequently in the literary memoirs of the great dramatic authors of her day, Voltaire, who was delighted with her impersonations of several of his own heroines, has immortalized her in some well-known verses. Her "Memoirs" appeared in 1799.

* CLAIRVILLE, Louis Francis Nicolaie, a dramatic writer, born at Lyons in January, 1811. Originally, like his father and mother, an actor, Clairville at length tried his hand at writing vaudevilles, and the result was perfect success in that light and agreeable kind of dramatic literature. During the revolutionary fever of 1848 he produced a piece which required