THE 



ENGLISH CYCLOPEDIA. 



BIOGRAPHY. 



The names of thoie licing at the lime of the emtinuout fabrication of tht ' XnolM Cyclopadia of Biography,' are preceded ty an asterisk. 



AARON. 



ABATI. 



AARON", the first high-priest of the Jews. He was the elder brother 

 of Moses, aud was, by the express appointment of Heaveii, asso- 

 ciated with that illustrious legislator in the enterprise of delivering 

 their countrymen from Egyptian bondage, and conducting them to 

 the promised land. Under the direction of his brother, Aaron, who 

 was a ready and eloquent speaker, announced the command of God 

 to I'liaraoh, and attested it by the series of miracles recorded in the 

 earlier chapters of the book of Exodus. During the sojourn in the 

 wilderness he was far from manifesting the steady confidence and 

 undaunted disregard of popular clamour which characterised the 

 conduct of Moses ; but, notwithstanding his timidity and weakness, 

 in yielding to the demand of the multitude that he would make them 

 a golden calf to worship, he was consecrated to the priesthood, of 

 which the highest office was made hereditary in his family. Having 

 ascended the summit of Mount Hor, in company with Moses and his 

 eldest son Eleazar, he died there, after Moses, as commanded by God, 

 had stripped him of his sacerdotal robes, and put them upon his son. 

 This event happened when Aaron was in the 123rd year of his age, 

 forty years after the departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and, 

 according to the commonly received chronology, in the year B.C. 1451, 

 or 2553 years from the creation of the world. The history of Aaron 

 is to be found in the book of Exodus, and the three following books 

 of the Pentateuch. 



ABA'NO, PIE'TRO DI, or Petrvt Apdnui, was born in 1250 at 

 Abano, the Roman name of which was Aponus, a village which is 

 5.J miles from Padua. He studied first at Padua, then went to Con- 

 stantinople to learn Greek, and afterwards to Paris, where he devoted 

 himself to mathematics and medicine. He travelled in England and 

 Scotland, whence he was recalled to Padua, in 1303 or 1304, to take 

 the professorship of medicine, then vacant. His reputation was very 

 great, and his charges for attendance very high. Ho combined astrology 

 with astronomy, and perhaps made some pretence to magic. At all 

 events he was regarded as a magician, and in 1306 he was brought 

 before the tribunal of the Inquisition as a heretic and atheist ; but 

 defended himself so well a., to obtain an acquittal. In 1314 he 

 removed to Treviso, in compliance with the invitation of the inhabit- 

 ants. In 1315 another accusation was brought against him before the 

 Inquisition ; but he died before the inquiry was completed, in the 

 year 1316, at the age of 66. His judges however continued the inquiry 

 after his death, found him guilty, and ordered his body to be burnt. 

 Abano wrote several works on philosophy and medicine, and made 

 translations of ancient and Arabic medical writers. In his expositions 

 there is little of his own observation or of original thought ; but in 

 the knowledge acquired from the works of others he was not surpassed 

 by any physician of his time. 



AIJA'TJ, or ABBA'TI, NICCOLO', was born at Modena in 1512. 

 He is more frequently called Dell' Abate, but erroneously according 

 to the showing of Tiraboschi, as his family name was AbatL Before 

 Tiraboschi, Niccolo's surname was supposed to be unknown, and the 

 n.ime of Dell' Abate was given to him from the circumstance of his 

 being less known for his own works than as the assistant of Prirna- 

 ticcio, who was called L' Abate by the Italians, after he was made 

 Abb<S of St. Martin near Troyes, by Francis L of France. Abati 

 executed in fresco the Adventures of Ulysses and other works from 

 the designs of Primaticcio, for the palace of Fontainebleau, the decora- 

 tion of which was entrusted to Primaticcio after the death of II Rosso. 

 Print* from the Adventures of Ulysses, by Van Thulden. were pub- 



BIOO. civ. VOL. i. 



lished in Paris in 1630 : the original works were destroyed with the 

 building in 1738, to make room for a new structure. 



Abati's own works however, in Modena and Bologna, were produc- 

 tions of the greatest merit, according to the Carracci ; and in a sonnet 

 of Agostino, which is a sort of recipe for making a great painter, he is 

 mentioned in conclusion as combining in himself all the required 

 excellences. There are few of Abati's works remaining, and the.-; are 

 chiefly frescoes; he seems to have painted comparatively little in oil. 

 It is not known who his master was, or whether he had any other 

 master than bis father Giovanni Abati, who was an obscure painter 

 and modeller of Modena. From a similarity in hU works to the style 

 of Correggio, some have supposed that he was a pupil of Correggio ; 

 he is al-o said to have studied under the sculptor Begarelli : if so he 

 was probably well acquainted with Correggio, with whom Begarelli 

 was intimate. 



His earliest essays upon his own account were in partnership with 

 another painter, Alberto Fontaua, a practice not unusual at that period 

 in Italy, when there was little or no distinction between artists and 

 artisans in the manner of employing them or estimating their works. 

 In 1537 he painted with Foutana, at Modena, some frescoes in the 

 butchers' market, by which he obtained some reputation; and he 

 acquired great distinction by some frescoes in the Scandiauo Palace, 

 from Ariosto and the ^Eneid of Virgil, which are still extant ; they 

 have been engraved by Gajani. These with some conversation-pieces 

 and concertos in the Institute of Bologna, a Nativity of Christ under 

 the portico of the Leoni Palace, and a large symbolical picture in 

 the Via di San Mamolo, in the same city, are the only frescoes now 

 extant by Abati ; and his oil-pictures are likewise very scarce. 



Of the works in the Institute, Zanotti has written an account 

 'Delle Pitture di Pellegrino Tibaldi e Niccolo Abbati,' &c., in which 

 there are engravings of them : Malvasia also has given a laudatorv 

 description of them : they have been compared with the works o'f 

 Titian. The Nativity of the Leoni Palace, which has been engraved 

 by Gondolfi, is mentioned in the highest terms by Count Algarotti, 

 who discovered in it " the symmetry of Raphael, the nature of Titian, 

 and the grace of Parmegiano." Of his easel-pictures in oil the most 

 celebrated is the Martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul, a large picturo 

 on wood, which was painted for the Church of the Benedictines at 

 Modena in 1546. It is now in the Dresden Gallery, and has been 

 engraved by Folkema for tho 'Rccueil d'Eatampes aprfcs les plus 

 ccli'bres Tableaux de la Galerie de Dresde.' 



From about 1546 until 1552, when he accompanied Primaticcio to 

 France, Abati lived in Bologna, and his Bolognese works were painted 

 during this interval: he died in Paris in 1571. 



Abati's principal faculty was painting in fresco, in which he had 

 surprising facility. According to Vasari he never retouched his works 

 when dry, which cannot be said of many fresco-painters ; yet, says 

 Vasari, the paintings of an entire apartment were executed with such 

 uniformity that they appeared to be the work of a single day. Abati 

 excelled in landscape, for his period ; there is a Rape of Proserpine 

 in the Duke of Sutherland's collection, of which the background is 

 an extensive landscape ; it was formerly in the Orleans Gallery, and 

 was sold at the sale in this country for 160J. 



Several of Abati's relations also distinguished themselves as painters : 

 bis brother Pietro Paolo was a clever horse and battlo painter ; his son 

 Giulio Camillo, bis gruml-on Ercole, and his great grandson Pietro 

 Paolo the younger, were all painters of ability, especially Ercole, who 



