Page:Imperialdictiona03eadi Brandeis Vol3a.pdf/339

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
MAN
307
MAN

partisanship. When the rioters to the number of sixty thousand crowded round the houses of parliament to present the "monster petition," Lord Mansfield was ill-treated by the rabble on his way to the house of lords; and, though his robes were torn, he barely escaped without suffering personal violence. Not satisfied with this, they rushed to Bloomsbury Square, sacked his house, and set fire to the premises; thereby destroying plate, furniture, pictures, and an invaluable library. On the 4th June, 1788, Lord Mansfield, then in his eighty-third year, unable any longer to take his seat on the bench through bodily infirmity, sent in his resignation. The whole bar testified their reverence for the veteran lawyer, who for three decades had presided over the administration of justice with so much glory, by presenting through their leader, Thomas Erskine, a farewell address couched in terms of tender affection and profound esteem. He lived five years after this, retaining to the close of his life a mind which the waning years failed to darken. The last words that passed his lips were—"Let me sleep; let me sleep." Between the tombs of Chatham and Lord Robert Manners in Westminster abbey there may be seen a monument the workmanship of Flaxman—in design of singular beauty, in execution faultless—raised out of gratitude and reverence for the memory of the great Lord Mansfield.—G. H. P.

MANSO or MANZO, Giambattista, Marquis of Villa, an eminent patron and cultivator of letters, born in Naples in 1561; died there, 28th December, 1645. After bearing arms in his youth for Savoy and Spain, he returned to Naples, and was one of the chief founders of the Academy degli Oziosi; he was also the principal promoter of the college of Nobles, to which he left all his large property, parsimoniously husbanded. His moral and religious character stood high; he was eminent in manly and elegant exercises; and won the love of Tasso, who dedicated to him his Dialogue on Friendship. Manso's own poems, chiefly light and amatory, are of middling merit. The "Poesie Nomiche," 1635, may be named; also "Dialogues on Love," 1608; and a "Life of Tasso," 1631.—W. M. R.

MANSOR or MANSUR, Abu Djafar Abdallah II., surnamed Al, the second Abbaside caliph, was born in 712, and succeeded his brother Saffah in 754. In 763 he founded Bagdad, having been compelled by an insurrection to leave the ancient capital, Hashemiah. His avarice was excessive, so that he was called Abu Dawanek or Father Halfpenny, and at his death he left a prodigious amount of treasure. He was a patron of learning, though not learned himself. He died in 775.—D. W. R.

MANT, Richard, bishop successively of Killaloe and of Down and Connor, was born in 1776 at Southampton, where his father was rector of All Saints. Educated at Winchester and at Trinity college, Oxford, he became a fellow and tutor of Oriel, and took orders in 1802. In the same year he edited the poetical works of Thomas Warton, the historian of English poetry, and brother of his old master at Winchester, Joseph Warton. After holding various preferments, he delivered the Bampton lecture for 1812; and the reputation thus acquired procured him the appointment of domestic chaplain to Dr. Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury. In 1813 the Christian Knowledge Society commissioned two of the chaplains of the archbishop of Canterbury, Drs. Mant and D'Oyley, to prepare the family Bible with notes which, first published in 1817, and frequently since, is well known as D'Oyley and Mant's Bible. An edition of the Book of Common Prayer—with notes similarly selected, but by himself alone, from writers of the English church—appeared in 1820. In 1815 he became rector of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, and in 1818 of East Hursley in Surrey. In 1820 he was made bishop of Killaloe, and in 1823 he was translated to Down and Connor. He had previously published some pleasing poetry, when in the latter year appeared his metrical version of the Psalms, in a great variety of metres. From the time of his translation to Down and Connor to his death in November, 1848, he was very active in religions authorship. Among his works of this period may be mentioned his "Biographical Notice of the Apostles and Evangelists," 1828; and his elaborate and careful "History of the Church in Ireland," 1839-40, from the Reformation to the union of the churches of England and Ireland in 1801. A memoir of the life of this amiable, accomplished, and diligent prelate by Archdeacon Berens was published in 1849.—F. E.

MANTEGNA, Andrea, painter and engraver, was born near Padua in 1431. His father, Biagio or Blaise Mantegna, kept a small farm, and the boy Andrea was employed to tend sheep. The stories of Giotto and Mantegna are thus somewhat similar. Each by his own simple ability secured at once a patron and an instructor. Cimabue adopted Giotto, and Squarcione, who had a great school of art at Padua, adopted Mantegna when he was a boy of ten years of age only. And it is commonly reported that Mantegna would have been Squarcione's heir had he not married the daughter of his patron's rival, Jacopo Bellini, Nicolosia the sister of Gentile and Giovanni Bellini. A Mantuan writer, however, has shown that the family name of Mantegna's wife was Nuvolosi, not Bellini; and this story must be classed with the many art fables brought to light in recent times. Mantegna worked his way like other artists, and in 1468 he had the good fortune to be taken into the service, of the Marquis Lodovico Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, who awarded him a salary of about £30 a year, and gave him a small piece of land in the town, and on which in 1476 Mantegna built himself a house. He was much employed by Lodovico's successor, Francesco Gonzaga. It was for this prince that he painted the celebrated series of tempera pictures on paper fixed to cloth, known as "Cæsar's Triumph," and now, nine in number, at Hampton Court palace. They were originally painted for the palace of San Sebastiano at Mantua. These works were commenced about 1487, before the painter's visit to Rome. Mantegna went to Rome in the summer of 1488, and returned to Mantua at the close of the summer of 1490. They were finished in 1492. They were brought to England in the reign of Charles I., who bought them from the Duke Carlo; the collections of the earlier Gonzagas being broken up and dispersed during the disputed succession war in 1630. This "Triumph," now much damaged, was and is considered Mantegna's masterpiece. His works are very scarce, there being about thirty-three authenticated pictures only by him, besides frescoes. Many of these pictures are in tempera and on cloth. The Louvre possesses one of the most celebrated, the "Madonna della Vittoria," formerly in the church of Santa Maria della Vittoria at Mantua, and containing a portrait of the Marquis Francesco Gonzaga. The National gallery possesses a beautiful example of less pretensions, but more taste—one of the painter's very last pictures. Both works are in tempera and on cloth. The "Triumph" of Mantegna at Hampton Court is well known by the wood-cuts of Andreani and the engravings of Van Andenaert and Clarke. Mantegna's style is hard and severe, but his drawing is correct and grand, and his execution is most careful. His engravings—among the earliest Italian examples of the art—number about sixty, according to some authorities. They are much in the style of the prints of Marcantonio. He was, like his master Squarcione, a lover and student of the antique, and this taste is evident in all his works—in none more than in the figures and draperies of the Hampton Court "Triumph;" his colouring is forcible, and not deficient in harmony. This great painter and engraver, who distinguished himself also as sculptor, poet, and architect, died at Mantua on the 13th September, 1506, and was buried in his own chapel of St. John the Baptist, in the church of Sant' Andrea at Mantua. He left by his wife Nicolosia Nuvolosi two sons and a daughter. The second son, Francesco, was a painter, and not only assisted his father in his lifetime, but completed some of his works. He was born about 1470, and was still living in 1517. Carlo del Mantegna and Giovanni Francesco Carotto were Mantegna's principal scholars and assistants.—(Vasari, Vite, &c., ed. Le Monnier; Coddè, Pittori Mantovani, &c.; Moschini, Della Pittura in Padova, &c.)—R. N. W.

MANTELL, Gideon Algernon, M.D., a distinguished palæontologist, was born at Lewes in Sussex about the year 1790. Having studied medicine, he practised as a surgeon-apothecary in his native town for several years. The country round Lewes abounding in fossil remains, his location there was exceedingly favourable to the study of geology and palæontology—a study in which he engaged with the greatest enthusiasm, and prosecuted with great success. Dr. Mantell was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1825, and in 1835 received the Wollaston medal as an acknowledgment of the value of his palæontological researches. He was about the same time elected a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London. In 1845 he removed from Lewes to Brighton; but four years afterwards he settled as a practitioner at Clapham, near London. After a few years' residence in that locality he sold his practice and removed to Chester Square in London, where he resided for several years, continuing his medical practice and scientific labours at the same