SOI 



ARETINO, PIETRO. 



ARGAND, AIME. 



302 



a low amour, iu the course of which he was dangerously wounded by 

 a rival ; and the same incident was indirectly the cause of embroiling 

 him with Berni, II Mauro (Arcano), and some other poets of the Ber- 

 nesque school, who were thenceforth through life his determined 

 enemies and unscrupulous maligners. Through all these mishaps 

 however Pietro was able to acquire and retain the patronage, not only 

 of some of the Medici, but of Francis I. of France. 



In March 1527 he took up his abode at Venice. There, with no 

 interval of absence exceeding a few weeks, he resided till his death, 

 which took place in that city in 1557, when he had completed his sixty- 

 fifth year. These last thirty years of his life were spent in what he 

 himself desired to describe as literary labour, but of which the greater 

 part was quite unworthy of so honourable an appellation. He did 

 indeed compose and publish a few works properly literary, but the 

 composition of these was one of his least important employments ; 

 and so idle and debauched a person can hardly be supposed to have 

 been influenced in writing them by any higher motive than this, that 

 the acquisition of a certain amount of literary reputation was neces- 

 sary for effecting the great end which he kept steadily in view. He 

 did indeed likewise associate with literary men and artists : in fact, 

 intellectual society had real charms for him ; and it is plain that in 

 such society he was eminently qualified to shine. He acquired and 

 retained the friendship, or seeming friendship, of most of those men 

 of genius who adorned Italy in his time ; his list of literary friends 

 including such names as that of Bernardo Tasso, while Titian was his 

 constant companion, and Michel Angelo his frequent correspondent. 

 But all these pursuits and companionships, although embraced perhaps 

 in some degree from genuine liking, were most assiduously cultivated 

 for their bearing on other objects, and to these they were skilfully made 

 subservient. 



The great aim of Pietro's life at Venice was the acquisition of wealth : 

 wealth he desired ardently, not that he might hoard it, but because 

 without it he could not purchase sensual gratifications. His method 

 of earning money was one which the vocabulary of modern times 

 might enable us to describe by a very plain and undignified term. He 

 was a writer of begging letters. This was exactly the fact : there was 

 nothing to elevate it except the rank of the parties to whom the 

 mendicant addressed himself, and the singular success with which his 

 applications were crowned. Among Pietro's benefactors were many 

 nobles and statesmen : but his favourite correspondents were persons 

 higher still. He established a correspondence, not only with every 

 reigning prince in Italy, but with the emperor of Germany, the king 

 of France, the kings or royal families of Poland, Portugal, Spain, and 

 England. He received gifts or pensions from most of these illustrious 

 persons, as well as from Sultan Solyman and Barbarossa the pirate. 

 From the gains thus procured he supported himself during the thirty 

 years of his residence in Venice, not merely in comfort, but in the 

 profuse luxury of a debauchee. 



His letters, which he published in six successive volumes, explain 

 distinctly how this improbable result was brought about. The machinery 

 was so cumbrous, that it is here quite impossible to expose all its in- 

 ternal mysteries ; but the principal parts of the moving power may 

 be easily exhibited. We mistake Pietro's position entirely if we accept, 

 as in any sense literally true, his favourite title of ' Scourge of Princes." 

 He wished to be considered capable of becoming their scourge, but in 

 addressing them he was their abject flatterer. He never went farther 

 in his endeavours to extort favours, than insinuating that his praise of 

 other princes would imply dispraise of those whom he addressed ; and 

 that bis praise must be earned by liberality, the first of kingly virtues. 

 The point most difficult to be understood is, how he was able to make 

 his royal patrons believe that it was worth while to purchase either 

 his praise or his silence. Even this point could be in no small degree 

 elucidated by an ex position of the relation in which Pietro stood to 

 the literary world of his time ; but that relation was so complicated 

 that its details cannot be entered into. The principle however upon 

 which he acted was abundantly plain ; and it is not unfairly described, 

 when it ia called a system of deliberate imposture. It consisted in 

 diffusing, in all accessible quarters, and by every conceivable artifice, 

 an exaggerated opinion of his literary powers, both as a panegyrist 

 and a satirist. He did contrive to make himself estimated, in both 

 capacities, infinitely beyond the worth of anything which he ever 

 really performed. The means by which this effect was produced are 

 interesting and curious in the extreme, as illustrations of human 

 character, whether we regard the actor in the plot, or those upon 

 whom he worked. 



Very seldom did any unpleasant collision mar the animal repose of 

 his life in Venice. He was too cautious, or rather too timid, to risk 

 anything of the sort. He attempted again and again, and in Borne 

 cases successfully, to conciliate even his literary foes ; but after all 

 these men could only vilify his moral character, and he understood 

 bis own position too well to feel any serious uneasiness on that score. 

 With persons of higher rank and greater power he never took liberties 

 unless when he believed he might do so with impunity ; and if he 

 found that this expectation was groundless, he lost no time in making 

 submissions. When he libelled Pope Clement VII., the pope was 

 beniegeu in the Castel Sant' Angelo ; and he was able to be on terms 

 of such favour with Julius III. that he was admitted to an interview, 

 and had, soon afterwards, the impudence to ask for a cardinal's hat; 



on the refusal of which he pasquinaded the pope and his family. He 

 slandered the exiled Pietro Strozzj ; but he lay hid in his house for 

 weeks on learning that Pietro had threatened to cut his throat. His 

 most unlucky encounter was with Harvell, the English ambassador at 

 Venice, who, on learning that Pietro had charged him with misappro- 

 priating a gift sent by Henry VIII., waylaid the libeller, and made his 

 servants beat him soundly. 



The best and most systematic account of Pietro's life and writings 

 is the elaborate and accurate memoir by Mazzuchelli, ' La Vita di 

 Pietro Aretino,' first published in 1741, and again with great additions 

 and improvements, at Brescia, in 1763, 8vo. 



(Abridged from the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the 

 Diffusion of Uteful Knowledge.) 



ARETI'NO, SPINELLO, one of the most distinguished of the early 

 Italian painters, was born at Arezzo in 1316. He was the pupil of 

 Jacope del Caseutino, whom however he surpassed even as a boy. He 

 obtained a reputation very early by some frescoes illustrating the life 

 of San Niccolo, which he executed in a new church of that saint, 

 built at Arezzo by Dardano Acciajuoli, and which procured him an 

 invitation from Baroni Capelli, a citizen of Florence, to paint the 

 principal chapel of Santa Maria Maggiore, with subjects from the life 

 of the Virgin, and of Sant' Antonio Abate. He executed some frescoes 

 in the monastery of San Miniato, near Florence, which still remain ; 

 others in the monastery of San Bernardo, at Arezzo ; and others in 

 distemper, in the monastery of Monte Oliveto near Florence. He 

 executed also six of the series of frescoes illustrating the life of San 

 Ranieri, in the Campo Santo at Pisa, which Vasari reckons among his 

 best works ; scarcely anything of them now remains, but there are 

 prints of them in Lasinio's ' Pitture a Fresco del Campo Santo di Pisa." 

 The principal works of Spiuello are not mentioned by Vasari ; they are 

 in the town-hall of Siena, and are from the life of Pope Alexander III. 

 Rumohr describes them in his 'Italian Researches.' Aretino was 

 still painting them in 1408, which probably was the year of his death. 

 Vasari says he died about 1400, aged 92; and assuming, upon this 

 authority, that he died aged 92, in 1408, he was born, as mentioned 

 above, in 1316. Aretino excelled in expression, and, iu the opinion of 

 Vasari, was a better painter than Giotto, and equal to him iu design. 

 (Vasari, Vite de' Pittori, &c., and the Notes to Schorn's German 

 translation ; Rumohr, Jtalieniiche Forichmtgen,) 



ARFE, the name of two very distinguished Spanish silversmiths, 

 and the designers and constructors of several of the most costly taber- 

 nacles which do or did adorn the cathedrals of Spain. 



Henrique de Arfe, the elder, and the grandfather of the other, Juan 

 de Arfe, made, between 1506 and 1524, the silver tabernacles of the 

 cathedrals of Leon, Cordova, and Toledo. The last, which is a gothic 

 design, and hexagonal, is ornamented with '200 small statues, besides 

 baa-reliefs and other embellishments; it weighs rather more than 5292 

 ounces. It was gilded by Francisco Merino in 1599. 



Juan de Arfe y Villafane, the grandson, was born at Leon in 1535 ; 

 his father Antonio, likewise a silversmith of ability, was his instructor. 

 He is the artist of three of the finest tabernacles iu Spain those of 

 Avila, Seville, and Osmas. That of Seville is the largest and most 

 costly in Spain; it is 12 feet high, and its whole weight in 1668 was 

 rather more than 17,397 ounces. It was completed in 1587, and Arfe 

 himself published an account of it. He made also tabernacles for 

 the cathedrals of Burgos and Valladolid, and one for the church of 

 St. Martin at Madrid. Arfe was much employed by Philip II. and 

 Philip III. ; the former appointed him assayer of the Mint of Sego-ia. 

 About 1590 he made the tabernacle of Osmas, in which he was assisted 

 by his son-in-law Lesmes Fernandez del Moral. He also wrote two 

 works connected with the theory of his profession ' Quilatador de 

 Oro, Plata, y Piedras,' Valladolid, 1572 ; and ' Varia Commensuracion 

 para la Escultura y Arquitectura,' Seville, 1585. The date of his death 

 is not known. 



(Ponz, Viage de Eapana, &c. ; Cean Bermudez, Diccionario Jliito- 

 rico, &"..) 



ARQAND, AIME, was the inventor of the kind of lamp which 

 commonly bears his name, although for some time he was partially 

 deprived of the credit due to him by the substitution of another. He 

 was a native of Geneva, but is said to have been in England when, 

 about the year 1782, he produced the first lamp on his improved 

 principle, the main feature of which is that the wick, and consequently 

 the flame also, is in the form of a hollow cylinder, and that a current 

 of air is allowed to pass up the centre of the cylinder, so as to admit 

 a free supply of oxygen to the interior as well as the exterior of the 

 flame. This arrangement obviates the difficulties attending the pro- 

 duction of a large flame either by the use of a single large wick or a 

 series of small ones arranged in a straight line, neither of which will 

 produce equally perfect combustion or equal brilliancy of light ; and 

 also, by occasioning the complete combustion of the oil by which the 

 flume is fed, it prevents the emission of smoke. From a paper on the 

 Argand lamp in the 'Penny Magazine,' it appears that the lamp did 

 not satisfy the expectations of its ingenious inventor until the acci- 

 dental discovery, by his younger brother, of the glass chimney, which, 

 by confining the air immediately surrounding the burner, occasions an 

 upward current outside as well as inside the cyliudrical flame, and 

 thereby causes the flame to rise high above the wick, and to yield the 

 greatest possible amount of light. Shortly after Argand contrived his 



