Ml 



ZOfiGA, GEORG. 



ZOILUS. 



having visited Cassel and Frankfort, and traversed Hesse, the Palati- 

 nate, Suabia, and Bavaria, went down the Danube to Vienna, and 

 thence crossed the Tyrol and Carinthia to Venice, whence they pro- 

 ceeded through Lombardy and Tuscany to Rome, and from Rome to 

 Naples. Returning to Rome, they spent two months more in that 

 city; and then, in May 1781, were about to take their departure, by 

 the way of Milan and Turin, for France, when an unexpected death 

 suddenly recalled them to Denmark. 



Soon after his return home Zoega was introduced to the Danish 

 minister Guldberg, who, struck with his merit, appointed him to 

 make a numismatic tour at the charge of the king iu Germany aud 

 Italy. Upon this enterprise he set out in April 1782; and after 

 spending six months in the Imperial Museum at Vienna, he arrived 

 once more at Rome, in January 1783. From this date Italy, and 

 chiefly Rome, continued, with the exception of a short visit which 

 he made to Paris in 1784, to be the residence of Zoc'ga to the end of 

 his life. The sudden death of his patron Guldberg, the news of which 

 reached him while he was at Paris, iu May 1784, reduced him for a 

 time to great straits ; and his difficulties were made the more serious 

 by his having some time before married a young Italian lady, Maria 

 Pietruccioli, the beautiful but penniless daughter of a painter, and 

 become a convert to popery. He had however on the introduction of 

 the Austrian papal nuncio Garompi, whose acquaintance he had made 

 at Vienna, been received with distinguished favour by the celebrated 

 Stefano Borgia, then secretary to the Propaganda College, afterwards 

 cardinal ; and he soon, through Borgia's interest, received from the 

 popo the appointment of interpreter of modern languages to the Pro- 

 paganda College. He was engaged in the preparation of a critical 

 catalogue of the series of Egyptian coins struck by the Roman em- 

 perors, mostly as contained in the rich museum of Borgia at Velletri, 

 which was at last published in 4to at Rome, in 1787, with the title of 

 ' Numi ^Egyptii Imperatorii prostrantes in Museo Borgiano Velitris, 

 adjectis prseterea quotquot reliqua hujus classis numismata ex variis 

 museis atque libris colligere obtigit.' This work attracted great 

 attention, and soon made the name of Zoe'ga known throughout 

 Europe. It was followed by his greatest work, his treatise on Obe- 

 lisks, prepared at the desire of Pope Pius VI., and the printing of 

 which, after it had been going on for five years, was at last completed 

 in 1797. But after the labours aud anxieties of so many years, which 

 pressed the more heavily upon Zocga inasmuch as he had to contend 

 at the same time with many other distractions and vexations, straitened 

 circumstances, frequent attacks of illness, the still worse health of his 

 wife, and the death of many of his children, eight of whora, out of 

 eleveu, he is stated to have lost in eighteen years, the publication of 

 the work was for a time prevented by the hurricane of the French revo- 

 lution which had already swept the north of Italy, and in the begin- 

 ning of 1798 enveloped Rome, throwing down or scattering pope and 

 cardinals, wresting from the libraries and museums many of their 

 most precious treasures, threatening in short to break up the whole 

 system of things in which the great archaeologist lived and moved aud 

 had his being. At first Zoe'ga thought of taking flight, as his patron 

 Cardinal Borgia had done ; but, mainly, it is probable, from irresolu- 

 tion, he remained till the French liberating army, as it called itself, 

 made its entry ; aud then, caught for the moment by the prevailing 

 contagion, he joined in hailing what seemed to his excited imagina- 

 tion, and that of many others, the resurrection of old Roman freedom. 

 But this enthusiasm did not last long; after a few months he is 

 found in his letters expressing his repentant regret for having ever 

 for an instant approached what he calls the popular volcano. Mean- 

 while he had been appointed a member of the newly established 

 Roman National Institute, with the other most eminent of the Italian 

 men of letters; and he afterwards read several learned discourses 

 before this body. At last, in 1800, after the return of his friend 

 Cardinal Borgia with the new pope, Pius VII., the treatise on Obelisks 

 appeared in a magnificent folio volume, bearing the date of 1797, and 

 the title of 'De Origine et Usu Obeliscorum ; ad Pium Sextum Pouti- 

 ficem Maximum, auctore Georgio Zoe'ga.' A thousand copies were 

 printed. This may probably be considered as the earliest modern 

 work upon the subject of Egyptian antiquities which still retains any 

 value, and as the foundation aud commencement of all the sound 

 investigation which that department of archaeology has yet received. 



Zocga now, broken down by infirmities, though as yet only in his 

 forty-fifth year, and having secured no provision for his family, began 

 to turn his eyes to his native country ; and with his great reputation 

 he found little difficulty in obtaining from the king of Denmark au 

 appointment to a professorship in the University of Kiel. This 

 arrangement was made in the beginning of 1802 ; but in fact, he 

 could not bring himself to leave Rome, and at last, in 1804, after he 

 had repeatedly obtained leave to postpone his departure on various 

 grounds, he was permitted to remain where he was, with the title of 

 professor and the same advantages which he woulcUhave had at Kiel, 

 retaining at ^he same time the appointment of agent to his Danish 

 majesty, which he had held for some years past. His salary alto- 

 gether is stated to have amounted to 900 crowns; but then it was 

 paid in paper, and the Danish paper money at this time, and still 

 more at a later date, was much depreciated. Zoe'ga's next work was 

 a catalogue of the Coptic Manuscripts in the library of Cardinal 

 Borgia : ' Catalogus Codicum Copticorum Manu Scriptorum qui in 



Museo Borgiano Velitris adservantur ; auctore Georgio Zoe'ga, Dano, 

 Equite Aurato ordinis Danobrogici, fol., Rornre, Typis Sacrse Congre- 

 gationis de Propaganda Fide.' The whole of this work, with the 

 exception only of three pages of corrigenda, was printed in 1805, but 

 the sudden death of Cardinal Borgia, which took place at Lyon in the 

 end of 1804, and the embarrassment into which Zocga was thrown by 

 that event, which involved him in a law-suit with the heirs of the 

 cardinal and the Propaganda College about the expenses of carrying 

 the book through the press, prevented it from being published till 

 1810, after his decease, when the case was decided in favour of his 

 children. Meanwhile he had commenced, in conjunction with Pira- 

 nesi and the engraver Piroli, an account of the antique bas-reliefs 

 existing at Rome ' Bassirilievi Antichi di Roma,' the first 4to volume 

 of which, published in numbers, was completed in May 1 808 ; a second 

 volume was carried on for some numbers by Zoe'ga, without the 

 assistance of Piranesi, but was left uufinished at his death, which 

 took place on the 10th of February 1809. Eight days after his death 

 the announcement was received by hia family of his having been 

 appointed by the king of Denmark a knight of the order of Danne- 

 brog. A German translation of his last work, in 2 vols. small folio, 

 (one of letter-press, one of plates), was published at Giessen in 1811-12, 

 by F. G. Welcker, then professor of Greek in the university there, 

 with the title of ' Die Antiken Eas-reliefe von Rom. In den original- 

 kupferstichen von Tomaso Piroli in Rom, mit den Erklarungen von 

 Georg Zocga. Uebersezt, und mit Anmerkungen begleitet, von F. 

 Gr. Welcker,' &c. In 1817 Welcker published an 8vo volume of 

 detached dissertations by Zoe'ga; and in 1819 a collection of his 

 Letters, in 2 vols., in German, with a memoir of his Life. 



ZO'FFANY, JOHANN, R.A., a distinguished painter of the latter 

 part of the 18th century, was by descent a Bohemian, but his father, 

 who was an architect, had settled in Germany. Johann Zoffany was 

 born, according to Fiorillo, at Regensburg in Bavaria, or, according to 

 another account, at Frankfort- on- the- Main in 1735: the latter probably 

 is the correct account. Young Zoffany was sent early by his father to 

 Italy, where he studied some years. After his return to Germany he 

 practised some time as an historical and portrait paiuter at Ccblenz 

 on the Rhine, from which place he came to England a few years before 

 the foundation of the Royal Academy, for he was elected oue of its 

 first members in 1768. In England, Sir Joshua Reynolds aud Garrick 

 became valuable patrons to him, and his first pictures which attracted 

 notice in London were a portrait of the Earl of Barrymore and some 

 theatrical portraits. He painted Garrick in Sir John Bute, and as 

 Abel Drugger in Ben Jonson's 'Alchymist;' Foote, as Sturgeon, iu 

 the ' Mayor of Garret ; ' Weston and Foote in Dr. Last ; aud Garrick 

 in the ' Farmer's Return,' in which the character aud drawing are very 

 good : the colouring is less successful. 



In 1771 Zoffany painted the royal family on a large cauvas, to the 

 number of ten portraits, of which there is a mezzo tiuto by Earlom. 

 He painted likewise two separate portraits of George III. and his 

 queen, which were engraved in mezzotiuto by Houston. Shortly after 

 this time he revisited Italy, and took a recommendation from 

 George III. to the Grand-Duke of Tuscany at Florence, where he 

 painted an interior view of the Florentine picture-gallery, which was 

 purchased by George III. In 1774 he painted a clever picture of the 

 'Life-school' of the Royal Academy, in which he introduced two 

 naked models and thirty-six portraits ; it has been engraved in mezzo- 

 tinto by Earlom. In 1781 or 1782 Zoffany went to the East Indies, 

 and lived some years at Lucknow, where he met with the greatest 

 success, and he painted three of his best works there, all of which 

 have been well engraved in mezzotinto by Earlom. One is the 

 Embassy of Hyderbeck to Calcutta, who was sent by the Vizier of 

 Oude to Lord Cornwallis ; he went with a numerous retinue by Patna 

 to Calcutta : the picture is a rich display of Indian costume, and 

 contains, besides about 100 figures, several elephants and horses ; the 

 scene is placed in Patna. The others are an Indian Tiger-Hunt, and, 

 as a companion to the Embassy, a Cock-Fight, at which there are many 

 spectators. 



Zoffauy returned to London about 1796 with a large fortune, and 

 died at Kew in 1810. 



(Fiorillo, Oeschichte der Mahlerey, &c.; Pilkington, Dictionaiij of 

 Painters.) 



ZO'ILUS (Zwi'Aos), a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, is called by 

 some a native of Ephesus (Scholiast ad ' Horn. Iliad,' v. 7), though the 

 majority of ancients describe him as a native of Amphipolis on the 

 Stryrnou, whence Heraclides Ponticus calls him a Thracian. (yElian/ 

 ' Var. Hist.,' xi. 10 ; Suidns ; Heraclid. Pont., ' Allegorize Homeric.,' 

 p. 424.) Julian describes Zoilus as a pupil of Polycrates, who wrote 

 an accusation of Socrates, and seems to have lived about B.C. 390. 

 Vitruvius ('Praefat.,' lib. vii.), ou the other hand, makes him a contem- 

 porary of Ptolemy Philadelphus, B.C. 283-247. Suidas (s. v. 'Avaifj.frr]s) 

 states that Anaximenes of Lainpsacus was a pupil of Zoilus, and we 

 know that this Anaximenes must have lived shortly after the time of 

 Alexander the Great. These different statements of the age at which 

 Zoilus lived do not allow us to draw any more definite conclusion than 

 that he must have lived during the period that followed the death of 

 Philip of Macedonia, that is, after B.c. 336, for we know that he wrote 

 a history which came down to the death of that king. Some modern 

 scholars have had recourse to the usual expedient in such cases, 



