ship; Johnson became in a measure one of the family, and a room was appropriated to him both in their town-house, and in their more famous villa at Streatham. During his frequent visits to them for sixteen years, says Boswell, "he had at Mr. Thrale's all the comforts and even luxuries of life, his melancholy was diverted, and his irregular habits lessened by association with an agreeable and well-ordered family." Mrs. Thrale's own conversation was clever and lively, and she gathered round her a circle which included—with Johnson—Burke, Reynolds, Garrick, Goldsmith, the Burneys, Wedderburn, and Dunning. Her latest biographer has gone the length of comparing Mrs. Thrale's to the Holland house of the succeeding generation. In 1781 Mr. Thrale died, and in 1784 Mrs. Thrale married Signor Piozzi, the music-master of her daughters, a man quiet and inoffensive, but whose powers of attraction seem to have been felt by herself alone. The match was strongly opposed, perhaps with unnecessary asperity, by Johnson, and his intimacy with her terminated. Their quarrel was not a long one, for in the year of Mrs. Thrale's marriage to Piozzi, Johnson died. Immediately after his death she published her well-known "Anecdotes" of him, a very lively and interesting work, though not free from inaccuracy and exaggeration. In 1788 appeared her correspondence with Johnson. Of her other works none are remembered. In 1809 she lost her second husband, and survived intelligent and lively until 1821, when she died at Clifton, near Bristol. The year before her death, she celebrated her eightieth birthday at Bath, by giving an assembly, at which seven or eight hundred guests were present, whom the octogenarian hostess surprised by her vivacity and sprightliness. In 1861 appeared an amusing and interesting work, "Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi," edited with notes and an interesting account of her life and writings, by A. Hayward, Esq., Q.C., the translator of Faust.—F. E.
PIPER, Carl, Count, the founder of a distinguished Swedish family, was raised from obscurity towards the close of the seventeenth century by King Charles XI., who, reposing entire confidence in him, afforded him the opportunity of gaining a singular ascendancy over the heir to the throne. Charles XII. on becoming king made Piper his prime minister, taking him with him in all his celebrated campaigns. Piper, it has been said, after a conference with Marlborough, induced Charles to make that fatal march towards Moscow, which resulted in the battle of Pultowa, where the king of Sweden was overthrown and his minister made captive. Piper was roughly treated by the Russians, by whom he was dragged from one fortress to another till he died in the castle of Schlüsselburg in 1716.—His son. Count Carl, Frederik, inherited great wealth, and reached high offices in the state, but quitted the court in 1756 on the execution of his son-in-law, Count Brahe, and died in 1770.—R. H.
PIPPI, Giulio, or rather Giulio de' Giannuzzi, commonly called Giulio Romano, was born at Rome in 1498, and became as a boy the pupil of Raphael, who was very fond of him, employed him extensively in the frescoes of the Vatican, and ultimately left him his co-heir in his art effects, with Gianfrancesco Penni, with the sole obligation that they were to complete his unfinished works. Giulio having performed this task, the chief part of which was painting the "Battle of Constantine" in the Sala di Costantino in the Vatican, left Rome in 1524, and entered the service of Federigo Gonzaga, duke of Mantua, and spread the influence of the Roman school in that city, establishing a great school of art there; Primaticcio being among his scholars. Giulio painted many pictures at Mantua, superintending also all the paintings of the Palazzo del Tè, which he rebuilt. Among the celebrated paintings are the story of Cupid and Psyche; and the Fall of the Giants, not painted by Giulio. His principal assistants, besides Primaticcio, were Benedetto Pagni and Rinaldo Mantuano. Giulio is considered the most able of all the scholars of Raphael; he excelled as an oil-painter, as well as in fresco. He died of fever, after fifteen days' illness, on the 1st of November, 1546, aged forty-seven, according to the registry of the death in the Archivio della Sanità of Mantua.—(Carlo D'Arco, Istoria della vita e delle opere di Giulio Pippi Romano, folio, Mantua, 1838.)—R. N. W.
PIRANESI, Giovanni Battista, an eminent Italian architectural draftsman and engraver, was born at Venice in 1720. At the age of eighteen he went to Rome to study as an architect, but devoted his attention to the picturesque rather than to the constructive character of the ancient edifices. He acquired remarkable facility in drawing, and his professional studies gave him great precision in delineating architecture; accordingly, from the publication of his first work on the "Antiquities of Rome," in 1741, he took rank as the ablest architectural draftsman in Italy. Piranesi was equally skilful with the etching needle as with the pencil; and when his prints had come to be so much in request he was accustomed to draw the subject at once upon the copperplate without making any preparatory sketch. He thus was enabled to produce some two thousand prints of all the more remarkable architectural monuments of Rome and its neighbourhood; of ancient statues, busts, vases, and candelabra; and of the antiquities of Herculaneum, Pompeii, &c. Most of these prints are of large size, and some, folding plates, open out to an extent of ten feet. They were published chiefly in series, some of them after his death; and the whole were issued in a collected form by his son in thirty large folio volumes. Piranesi was undoubtedly the greatest artist of his time in his special line, and one of the greatest of any time. His etchings are singularly vigorous and effective, and at the same time faithful; but they are not free from mannerism, are often exaggerated, and not seldom careless. They are in the main executed with the etching needle, the graver being rarely employed except to give sharpness in finishing. Piranesi never formally practised as an architect, but he was employed by Pope Clement XIII. to rebuild and decorate the church of Sta. Maria Popolo, and the priory of Malta; and these he executed so much to the pope's satisfaction that he created him a cavalier. He died at Rome, Nov. 9, 1778.—He was assisted in his later works by his son Francesco Piranesi, an engraver in the same style, but of inferior ability, born at Rome in 1748. In 1798 Francesco Piranesi was sent to Paris as minister to the French republic; and he eventually settled in that city, where he opened an establishment for printing and publishing his father's works, and where he issued the collected edition spoken of above. He died at Paris in 1810.—A daughter of the elder Piranesi, Laura., also assisted her father, and etched several separate plates of buildings.—J. T—e.
PIRKHEIMER, Bilibaldus, a historical writer, was born at Nuremberg in 1470. His father was in the council of the bishop of Eichstadt. Pirkheimer, after a brief period of service in the army, devoted himself to the study of law at Padua and afterwards at Pisa. On his return to his native place he was admitted into the senate. In 1499 he took command of the troops sent to assist Maximilian against the Swiss, and on the conclusion of the war was honoured with the title of imperial councillor. On his dismissal from the senate by a faction opposed to him, he gave himself to literary pursuits. He wrote Latin versions of portions of Plutarch, Plato, Xenophon, and Ptolemy, as well as several volumes on German history. In his epistle to Pope Adrian VI., the learned civilian enlightens his holiness on the true condition of Germany, throwing the blame of persecution and social disturbances on the Dominicans, who had menaced Reuchlin on the one hand, and openly sold indulgences on the other. Pirkheimer was in correspondence with all the leading men in Germany, and was held in universal respect for his learning and integrity. Died 22nd December, 1531.—J. E.
PIROLI, Tommaso, a celebrated Italian artist, born at Rome in 1750, was the most successful of the pupils of G. B. Piranesi. He engraved many plates from the ancient remains in Rome, which were published by Piranesi's sons. But Piroli's most esteemed works are his engravings, chiefly in shaded outline, from Michelangelo's prophets and sibyls in the Sistine chapel; Raphael's frescoes in the Farnesina; the frescoes of Masaccio, and the original editions of Flaxman's Outlines from Homer, Hesiod, Æschylus, and Dante. In this special line Piroli is almost without an equal: some of his prints are in what is called the chalk manner, but they have not the spirit and firmness of his outline engravings. He died at Rome in 1824.—J. T—e.
PIROMALLI, Paolo, a Dominican of Calabria, who died in 1667. He went as a missionary to Armenia, Georgia, and Persia, and on his way home was taken by a pirate, but ransomed, and came to Rome where he presented his report to Gregory VIII., who sent him to quiet the Armenians of Poland. He afterwards went to the East again, and became a bishop. He once more returned to Italy, and was promoted to a see in Calabria. His oriental studies were important and useful; he revised the Armenian version of the Bible; compiled a Latin and Persian lexicon, and an Armenian and Latin one; wrote an Armenian
