principal librarian and director of the Asiatic museum. He died August 16, 1851. His great literary merit lies in the collection and classification of oriental manuscripts and coins, on which subjects he has published a number of deeply learned treatises, mostly written in Latin. We quote his "Antiquitatis Muhamedanæ Monumenta Varia," 2 vols., "Beiträge zur Muhamedanischen Münzkunde," and "Numi Muhamedani."—K. E.
FRAGONARD, Alexandre-Evariste, born at Grasse in 1780, studied painting under David, and painted many pictures, but will be remembered longest as a sculptor, in which art he achieved marked success. Among the principal works of his chisel are the sculpture of the fountain in the Place Maubert at Paris, the alto-relievo in the pediment of the Chambre du Corps Legislatif, and a colossal statue of Pichegru. His pictures were chiefly taken from incidents in French history. He died in November, 1850.—J. T—e.
FRAGONARD, Jean Honoré, or, as he is variously called, Nicolas, a French painter, whose pictures are singularly characteristic of Parisian society, immediately preceding the revolution of 1789, was born at Grasse in Provence in 1732 A pupil, in the first instance, of Boucher and Chardin, he afterwards went as an academy student to Rome, where he studied the works of Pietro da Cortona, and caught something of his rapid superficial manner and gay colour. On his return to Paris, Fragonard painted historical subjects; and a large picture, "Coresus and Callirrhoë," excited great admiration, and secured his admission into the Academy. But yielding to the fascinations of society, he took to painting small pictures of bacchanalian and erotic subjects, and conversation pieces, which he painted in a light, facile, meretricious manner, but with a piquant, refined, and courtly air, which charmed the brilliant circles of the Parisian saloons, and which led to their immediate multiplication by the burin. Fragonard, beggared by the Revolution, died at Paris on the 22nd of August, 1806.—J. T—e.
FRAGUIER, Claude-Francois, born at Paris in 1666; died in 1728. Educated at Clermont, where he acquired the accomplishment of writing Latin verse, he joined the order of jesuits in 1683, and was sent to Paris to learn theology. There he learned other things, and left the order. Madame De Lafayette and Ninon d'Enclos undertook to form his French style, and succeeded. In 1705 he joined the Academy of Inscriptions, and from time to time published, sometimes in their Transactions, sometimes in separate tracts, dissertations on classical subjects. Some of his Latin poems are very beautiful, and have been published, with those of Huet, by the abbé d'Olivet.—J. A., D.
* FRAIKIN, Charles Auguste, a very popular Belgian sculptor, was born in the vicinity of Antwerp in 1816, and studied in the fine arts academy of that city. Fraikin has acquired his great popularity by his classic and female statues, in which the nude form is designed with admirable truth, and modelled with exceeding softness and vivacity; but which exhibit very unsculpturesque voluptuousness of position and expression. Fraikin was created a knight of the order of Leopold in 1848; and received honorary medals at the Great Exhibition of London in 1851, and of Paris in 1855.—J. T—e.
FRANC, Guillaume, a German musician, the composer, or at least the compiler, of the melodies which were set to Marot and Beza's version of the Psalms, 1542. He is said to have been no great musician. His name is unknown to fame, except as connected with the tunes in the Genevan Psalter; but as his task consisted in framing simple melodies, without caring for originality or labouring at harmony, his skill might have been equal to his task. Doubts having early been expressed as to Franc's being the author of the tunes, Beza himself testified the fact, in a formal document signed with his own hand, and dated November 2, 1552. Furthermore, an edition of the Genevan Psalms was printed in 1564, with the name of "Guillaume Franc," as the author of the musical rotes to them, and with the license of the local magistrate attesting Franc's authorship. Consequently, if Franc was the author of the tunes, as this evidence proves him to be, and if our Old Hundredth was among them, as undoubtedly it was, then in all fairness must Franc be regarded as the author of that tune—a question which has so much puzzled our musical antiquaries. No particulars of the life of this musician are known.—E. F. R.
FRANÇAIS, Antoine, born in Dauphiné in 1756; died at Paris in 1836—known generally as Français de Nantes. We find him first as directeur des douanes at Nantes. He was a member of the municipality there. In 1791 he was elected to the legislative assembly from the Loire Inférieure. He threw himself vehemently into the Revolution, declaimed against priests and tyrants, but the excesses which his declamations were calculated to encourage, soon disgusted him, and he retired to the mountains of Dauphiné. In 1798 he reappears as member of the council of Five Hundred. In 1804 he was appointed by Bonaparte directeur des droits reunis, an office of which he was deprived in 1814. He was also in 1804 named count of the empire, and given the cross of the legion of honour. In 1819 he was elected to the chamber of deputies, and his votes were always against the government. In 1822 he ceased to be a deputy, and passed into private life, from which he was recalled by the accession of Louis Philippe. He was named peer of France in 1831, but died of apoplexy in that year. He contributed several articles to the agricultural journals.—J. A., D.
FRANCAVILLA, Pietro, the Italian form of Pierre Francheville, was born at Cambray about 1548. Descended from a noble family, his passion for art at first met with strong opposition, but in the end he was suffered to take his own way. He is said to have commenced his career as a sculptor by spending five years among the wood-carvers of Insprück, He then went to Florence, carrying with him letters of recommendation to Giovanni di Bologna, who at once admitted him to his study and to a friendly intimacy. Francavilla appears for time some to have assisted Giovanni in the execution of several important works, and his own style was formed upon that of his master. From his own designs he produced at Florence, among others, for the chapel of Santa Croce, statues of "Moses and Aaron," and some of the cardinal virtues. At Pisa he executed statues of "Cosmo I." and of "Ferdinand I. succouring the city of Pisa," also, the sculpture in the façade of the new palace in which the Tribunale de prima Istanza then held its sittings. Whilst at Pisa he is said to have made himself an accomplished mathematician and anatomist. At Florence, according to Baldinucci, Francavilla practised painting; at Pisa he appears to have turned to architecture, and the Palazzo del Comune is said to have been erected from his designs. At the invitation of Henri IV. Francavilla removed to Paris, where, for that monarch and his successor he executed several works. Among those that remain are a "Goliath," in the Louvre, and two groups in the garden of the Tuileries. Francavilla is said to have written a work on anatomy and another on cosmography. He was alive in 1614; the year of his death is uncertain.—J. T—e.
FRANCESCA, Piero della, was born about 1410 at Borgo, now Città San Sepolcro. Piero was one of the most distinguished of the early Umbrian painters, his works being remarkable for their rich colour and elaborate execution. He seems to have had some scientific schooling in his youth, and this enabled him afterwards to turn his attention to the laws of perspective, of which he was one of the first artists to make a scientific study. A manuscript on the subject by him is still extant. It was in the possession of Giuseppe Bossi of Milan in 1810. Piero's first patron was Federigo de Montefeltro, duke of Urbino. He was patronized afterwards by the Malatesta family of Rimini. There is still a fresco by him in a chapel of the church of San Francesco there, signed—Petri de Burgo, opus, mccccl., which contains the portrait of Sigismondo Malatesta, the husband of Isotta da Rimini, of whom there is a profile in the national gallery, attributed to Piero della Francesca. It is a tempera picture, peculiar in costume and effect, but exceedingly careful in its execution, and in colouring and other respects very beautiful. Piero was also employed by Duke Borso in the Schifanoja palace in Ferrara, destroyed in 1469 for enlargement and improvement. From Ferrara he was invited by Pope Nicholas V. to Rome, and he executed some works in the Vatican, which were also afterwards destroyed to make room for the frescoes of Raphael. When sixty years old, says Vasari, Piero caught a cold in his eyes, which ended in total blindness, and he survived his sight twenty-six years. He was still living in 1494, but must have died shortly after that date, about 1496. He was, according to Vasari, the master of Pietro Perugino, of Luca Signorelli, and of Fra Luca Pacciolo, a writer on perspective, who styles Piero "el monarca de la pictura." A fine fresco by Piero is still preserved in the palazzo de' conservadori, in his native place, representing "The Resurrection of Christ." (Vasari, Vite, &c., Ed. Lemonnier. See also the National Gallery Catalogue.—R. N. W.
