385 



CORELLI, ARCANGELO. 



CORIOLANO, GIAMBATTISTA. 



353 



all the formalities of trial. The speech of her advocate [CHACTVEAIJ, 

 LAGARDE] is rather remarkable. He neither denied nor extenuated 

 the act; and acknowledged it to have been long premeditated. " She 

 avows everything, and seeks no means of justification; this, citizen- 

 judges, is her whole defence : this imperturbable calmness, this total 

 self abandonment these sublime feelings, which, even in the very 

 presence of death, show no sign of remorse, are not natural. It is for 

 you, citizen-judges, to fix the moral weight of this consideration in the 

 scales of justice." 



Charlotte Corday returned thanks to the pleader. " You have 

 seized," she said, " the true view of the question ; this was the only 

 method of defence which could have become me." She heard her 

 sentence with perfect calmness, which she maintained to the last 

 moment of her life. Her personal charms were of a high order ; and 

 her beauty and animation of countenance, even during her passage to 

 execution, added greatly to the interest inspired by her courage and 

 loftiness of demeanour. She was guillotined July 17, 1793. 



(Biog. Univ. ; Montgaillard, Hist, de France, <tc., vol. iv., pp. 55-59 ; 

 Miguet ; Lamartine, &c. ) 



CORELLI, ARCA'NQELO, musical composer, on whom his coun- 

 trymen bestowed the cognomen of ' II Diviuo,' was born at Fusignauo, i 

 in the Bolognese territory, in 1653. Adami fays that his instructor ' 

 in counterpoint was Simonelli ; and it appears pretty certain that his 

 master for the violin, the instrument of his early adoption, and which 

 he never abandoned, was Giambattista Bassani of Bologna. It is 

 statt 1 that Corelli went in 1672 to Paris, but that through the jealousy 

 of Lully he was soon obliged to quit that city. In 1630 Corelli 

 visited Germany, where he received extraordinary honours, not only 

 from the public, hut from sovereign princes, among whom the elector 

 of Bavaria distinguished himself by the hospitable manner in which 

 he treated the great musical geniu". Corelli returned to Rome at the 

 expiration of about two years, and published his first set of ' Twelve 

 Sonatas for two Violins and a Baso,' in 16S3. A second series appeared 

 in 16S5, eutitled ' Balletti da Camera.' These wero succeeded in 1690 

 by a third set; and the fourth was published in 1694. His admirable 

 sonatas for violin and base, or harpsichord, in which all violinists are 

 early initiated, were printed, with a dedication to the etectress of 

 Brandenburg, in 1700. When James II. sent, in 1686, the Karl of 

 Castlemaine as ambassador to the pope, Christina of Sweden, then at 

 Rome, celebrated the event by having an opera written, composed, 

 and performed, in the holy city. The band employed on this occasion 

 consisted of 150 stringed instruments, a prodigious and unprecedented 

 force for those days, and Corelli was chosen as leader, which duty he 

 performed in so satisfactory a manner, that the Italian opera in Rome 

 was placed under his direction chiefly, and in 1700 had arrived at a 

 degree of excellence which it had never before attained in the capital 

 of Italy. He now gained the friendship of the well-known patron of 

 art, the Cardinal Ottoboni, at one of whose 'Accademie' he met 

 Handel, then travelling in Italy. As a mark of attention to the great 

 German composer, the cardinal had the serenata, ' II Trionfo del Tempo 

 e della Verita' (afterwards altered into ' The Triumph of Time and 

 Truth') performed, the overture to which being in a style quite new 

 to Corelli, he led it in a manner that displeased the irascible composer, 

 who rudely snatched the violin from the hands of the gentle Italian. 

 Corelli no farther resented this indignity than by calmly observing, 

 " My dear Saxon, this music ia in the French styl, which I do not 

 understand." Some satire was half concealed in this remark, for 

 Handel at that time certainly imitated Lully 'a 'overtures, and the 

 inuendo, which was a lenient punishment for conduct so violent, 

 could not have been misunderstood by him. Corolli however, though 

 an exquisite performer in regard to expression and taste, had devoted 

 more of his attention to those high qualities which ought to be consi- 

 dered paramount to all others, tban to what is commonly understood 

 by the term execution ; he consequently waa sometimes embarrassed 

 by having music placed before him which at first sight he could not 

 easily master, and was abashed on finding that musicians infinitely 

 inferior to himself could play it without preparation or heitation. It 

 was at Naples that he met with some mortifications of the kind alluded 

 to, which prompted him to quit abruptly, and somewhat chagrined, 

 that city, to which he had been very warmly invited, and where it was 

 intended that he should be received with every mark of distinction. 



Corelli's greatest work, his 'Concert! Qrossi,' or Twelve Concertos, 

 was written many years before it appeared in print. The Concert! 

 were engraved in score at Amsterdam, and published in December 

 1712, six weeks only before their author breathed his last, an event 

 which took place on the 18th of January 1713. He was buried in the 

 church of Sunta Maria della Rotunda (the ancient Pantheon), where 

 a monument, with a marble bust, is erected to his memory, near that 

 of the greatest of painters, Raffaelle. On the pedestal' is a Latin 

 inscription by the Cardinal Ottoboni, which records in simple and 

 elegant terms the merits of the composer and the friendship of the 

 writer. 



Corelli's best works are imperishable. Rousseau has said that he 

 who without tears can listen to Pergolesi's ' Stabat Mater,' may feel 

 assured that he has no genius for music. We will also risk an assertion 

 that those who can without admiration hear the eighth concerto of 

 Corelli, as it used to be performed at the Ancient Concert, though 

 they may be able to boast great powers of execution as instru- 



mentalists or vocalists, can have no conception of the higher beauties 

 of composition can possess no soul for pure harmony. 



CORE'NZIO, BELLISA'RIO (Cavaliere), a Greek, and a celebrated 

 painter, distinguished for his ability and notorious for his invidious 

 tyranny over the painters of Naples in his time, whether Neapolitans 

 or strangers, was born about 1558. He waa five years the pupil of 

 Tintoretto at Venice, and settled in Naples about 1590. Here in 

 conjunction with Ribera and Carracciolo he obtained a complete 

 ascendancy, which he accomplished partly by his ability, partly by 

 dissimulation, and partly by violence. Corenzio, Ribera, and Carrac- 

 ciolo are said to have formed a triumvirate, whose object was to 

 control all the great undertakings ia paintings in Naples, and to allot 

 his portion to each ; and it is added that they did not scruple to resort 

 to the most violent measures to remove the rivals whom they failed 

 to intimidate. Coreuzio, though not to be compared with Tintoretto, 

 possessed nearly equal boldness of manner and facility of execution, 

 and he was also little inferior to him in invention. He was an able 

 colourist in oil, but he took little pleasure in that style ; his ambition 

 was to paint great works in fresco, and lie executed many at Naples. 

 In the number of his frescoes he has been equalled by few masters, 

 and by still fewer in their extent ; he could execute in a single day as 

 much work as would occupy four painters of ordinary efficiency in the 

 same time. One of his best and greatest works, the ' Feeding of the 

 Five Thousand," in the refectory of the Benedictines, occupied him 

 only forty days. He died in 1643, at an advanced age: he was 

 repairing one of his frescoes, when he fell from the scaffolding 

 and was killed. (Dominici, Vite dei Pitlori, <kc. ; Lanzi, Sloria 

 Piltorica, <tc.) 



CORINNA, a Greek lyric poetess, wa? a daughter of Archelodorus 

 or Aehelodorus and Procratia, and was born at Tanagra in Boootia. 

 As she resided during some period of her life at Thebes, she is some- 

 times called a Theban. She bore the surname Myia (/i.v?a, a fly), and 

 is often spoken of under this name alono. She lived about B.C. 500, 

 as we must infer from the persons with whom she was connected, and 

 was a woman of unusual beauty. She is said to have been a disciple 

 of the poetess Myrtis, and to have herself instructed Pindar in his 

 youth ; but afterwards to have contended with him in poetical con- 

 tests, and to have gained five victories over him. She appears at any 

 rate to have exercised a very great influence upon the development 

 of Pindar's youthful genius, and to have recognised his extraordinary 

 powers ; for she is said to have blamed Myrtis for venturing to enter 

 iuto competition with him. The poems of Corinna were collected 

 and divided (probably by the grammarians) into five books, and in 

 addition to this collection we have mention of epigrams and lyric 

 gnomes. But not one entire poem of hers has come down to us, and 

 only a very few fragments are extant, which scarcely enable us to 

 form an idea of their merit. Her great reputation however is attested 

 by the statues which were erected to her in several towns of Greece, 

 and by the prominent place which the Alexandrine critics assigned to 

 her among the lyric poetesses. She wrote in the yKolic dialect, which 

 however was interspersed with many Boeotian peculiarities. Her 

 poems moreover appear to have been principally intended for Boeotians; 

 for they abounded in allusions to Boeotian localities. From the frag- 

 ments extant we must infer that the subjects of some of her poems 

 were traditions about mythical heroes, and as in addition to this v/e 

 are told that she wrote CTTJ, we might suppose that she also composed 

 epic poetry, but we know from Hephtestion (p. 22, ed. Gaisforr'), that 

 these inj were contained in the fifth book of her poems, and that they 

 were choral odes or hymns in the heroic or epic verse. The frag- 

 ments of Corinna's poems are collected in F. Ch. Wolf's ' Foaminarum 

 IX. Illustrium Fragmenta et Elogia,' Hamburg, 1734, p. 42, &c. ; in 

 A. Schneider's ' Poetarum Graecorum Fragmenta,', Giessen, 1802, 8vo ; 

 and best in Tb. Ber^k's ' Poetae Lyrici Qrseci,' p. 811, &c. 



Suidas, in his article ' Corinna,' mentions two other lyric poetesses 

 of the name of Corinna, the one of Thespise or Corinth, and the other 

 Corinna the younger of Thebes, who was surnamed Myia. But these 

 two are otherwise unknown, and it is generally supposed that Suidas 

 is blundering in his usual way, and has made three persons out 

 of one. 



(F. G. Welcker in Creuzer's 'Meletemata, vol. ii. p. 1, &c. ; Bode, 

 Qeichichte der Helleniichen Dichtkunst, vol. ii. part 2, p. 115, fat) 



CORIOLA'NO, the name of three celebrated engravers, chiefly in 

 wood, in chiaroscuro. 



CBISTOFOKO CORIOLANO, the earliest, appears to have been a German 

 and a native of Niirnberg, whose name, Doppelmayr supposes, was 

 Lederer, but bavin? settled in Italy he translated it into Coriolano. 

 He cut, besides many other work*, the very clever portraits in the 

 second edition of Vasari, which was published at Florence in 1568. 

 He died, according to Uoppelmayr, in Venice, in 1600. 



GlAMBATTltfTA ComoLANO, the next in point of time, was born at 

 Bologna, and is supposed to have been the son of Cri.itoforo, but from 

 the dates upon his works, 1619-25, that of grandson is a moro probable 

 relationship: ho died in 1649. He was the pupil of G. L. Valesio, 

 and was painter, and engraver on copper and on wood ; but he painted 

 very little, and his cuts in wood are very few : his works consist 

 chiefly of engravings and etchings on copper, of which Bartsch describes 

 223, among which are several after the Caracci and other celebrated 

 Bologueae painters. 



