VOLUME XII SLICE I Gichtel, Johann to Glory (continued 4)

The action of the drug appears to be entirely psychic, and comparable to that of the mandrake of the Hebrews. There is no evidence that it possesses any pharmacological or therapeutic properties.

See Porter Smith, Chinese Materia Medica, p. 103; Reports on Trade at the Treaty Ports of China (1868), p. 63; Lockhart, Med. Missionary in China (2nd ed.), p. 107; Bull. de la Société Impériale de Nat. de Moscou (1865), No. 1, pp. 70-76; Pharmaceutical Journal (2), vol. iii. pp. 197, 333, (2), vol. ix. p. 77; Lewis, Materia Medica, p. 324; Geoffroy, Tract. de matière médicale, t. ii. p. 112; Kaempfer, Amoenitates exoticae, p. 824.

GIOBERTI, VINCENZO (1801-1852), Italian philosopher, publicist and politician, was born in Turin on the 5th of April 1801. He was educated by the fathers of the Oratory with a view to the priesthood and ordained in 1825. At first he led a very retired life; but gradually took more and more interest in the affairs of his country and the new political ideas as well as in the literature of the day. Partly under the influence of Mazzini, the freedom of Italy became his ruling motive in life,—its emancipation, not only from foreign masters, but from modes of thought alien to its genius, and detrimental to its European authority. This authority was in his mind connected with papal supremacy, though in a way quite novel—intellectual rather than political. This must be remembered in considering nearly all his writings, and also in estimating his position, both in relation to the ruling clerical party—the Jesuits—and also to the politics of the court of Piedmont after the accession of Charles Albert in 1831. He was now noticed by the king and made one of his chaplains. His popularity and private influence, however, were reasons enough for the court party to mark him for exile; he was not one of them, and could not be depended on. Knowing this, he resigned his office in 1833, but was suddenly arrested on a charge of conspiracy, and, after an imprisonment of four months, was banished without a trial. Gioberti first went to Paris, and, a year later, to Brussels, where he remained till 1845, teaching philosophy, and assisting a friend in the work of a private school. He nevertheless found time to write many works of philosophical importance, with special reference to his country and its position. An amnesty having been declared by Charles Albert in 1846, Gioberti (who was again in Paris) was at liberty to return to Italy, but refused to do so till the end of 1847. On his entrance into Turin on the 29th of April 1848 he was received with the greatest enthusiasm. He refused the dignity of senator offered him by Charles Albert, preferring to represent his native town in the Chamber of Deputies, of which he was soon elected president. At the close of the same year, a new ministry was formed, headed by Gioberti; but with the accession of Victor Emmanuel in March 1849, his active life came to an end. For a short time indeed he held a seat in the cabinet, though without a portfolio; but an irreconcilable disagreement soon followed, and his removal from Turin was accomplished by his appointment on a mission to Paris, whence he never returned. There, refusing the pension which had been offered him and all ecclesiastical preferment, he lived frugally, and spent his days and nights as at Brussels in literary labour. He died suddenly, of apoplexy, on the 26th of October 1852.

Gioberti’s writings are more important than his political career. In the general history of European philosophy they stand apart. As the speculations of Rosmini-Serbati, against which he wrote, have been called the last link added to medieval thought, so the system of Gioberti, known as “Ontologism,” more especially in his greater and earlier works, is unrelated to other modern schools of thought. It shows a harmony with the Roman Catholic faith which caused Cousin to declare that “Italian philosophy was still in the bonds of theology,” and that Gioberti was no philosopher. Method is with him a synthetic, subjective and psychological instrument. He reconstructs, as he declares, ontology, and begins with the “ideal formula,” “the Ens creates ex nihilo the existent.” God is the only being (Ens); all other things are merely existences. God is the origin of all human knowledge (called l’idea, thought), which is one and so to say identical with God himself. It is directly beheld (intuited) by reason, but in order to be of use it has to be reflected on, and this by means of language. A knowledge of being and existences (concrete, not abstract) and their mutual relations, is necessary as the beginning of philosophy. Gioberti is in some respects a Platonist. He identifies religion with civilization, and in his treatise Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani arrives at the conclusion that the church is the axis on which the well-being of human life revolves. In it he affirms the idea of the supremacy of Italy, brought about by the restoration of the papacy as a moral dominion, founded on religion and public opinion. In his later works, the Rinnovamento and the Protologia, he is thought by some to have shifted his ground under the influence of events. His first work, written when he was thirty-seven, had a personal reason for its existence. A young fellow-exile and friend, Paolo Pallia, having many doubts and misgivings as to the reality of revelation and a future life, Gioberti at once set to work with La Teorica del sovrannaturale, which was his first publication (1838). After this, philosophical treatises followed in rapid succession. The Teorica was followed by Introduzione allo studio della filosofia in three volumes (1839-1840). In this work he states his reasons for requiring a new method and new terminology. Here he brings out the doctrine that religion is the direct expression of the idea in this life, and is one with true civilization in history. Civilization is a conditioned mediate tendency to perfection, to which religion is the final completion if carried out; it is the end of the second cycle expressed by the second formula, the Ens redeems existences. Essays (not published till 1846) on the lighter and more popular subjects, Del bello and Del buono, followed the Introduzione. Del primato morale e civile degli Italiani and the Prolegomeni to the same, and soon afterwards his triumphant exposure of the Jesuits, Il Gesuita moderno, no doubt hastened the transfer of rule from clerical to civil hands. It was the popularity of these semi-political works, increased by other occasional political articles, and his Rinnovamento civile d’Italia, that caused Gioberti to be welcomed with such enthusiasm on his return to his native country. All these works were perfectly orthodox, and aided in drawing the liberal clergy into the movement which has resulted since his time in the unification of Italy. The Jesuits, however, closed round the pope more firmly after his return to Rome, and in the end Gioberti’s writings were placed on the Index (see J. Kleutgen, Über die Verurtheilung des Ontologismus durch den heiligen Stuhl, 1867). The remainder of his works, especially La Filosofia della Rivelazione and the Protologia, give his mature views on many points. The entire writings of Gioberti, including those left in manuscript, have been edited by Giuseppe Massari (Turin, 1856-1861).

See Massari, Vita de V. Gioberti (Florence, 1848); A. Rosmini-Serbati, V. Gioberti e il panteismo (Milan, 1848); C. B. Smyth, Christian Metaphysics (1851); B. Spaventa, La Filosofia di Gioberti (Naples, 1854); A. Mauri, Della vita e delle opere di V. Gioberti (Genoa, 1853); G. Prisco, Gioberti e l’ ontologismo (Naples, 1867); P. Luciani, Gioberti e la filosofia nuova italiana (Naples, 1866-1872); D. Berti, Di V. Gioberti (Florence, 1881); see also L. Ferri, L’Histoire de la philosophie en Italie au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1869); C. Werner, Die italienische Philosophie des 19. Jahrhunderts, ii. (1885); appendix to Ueberweg’s Hist. of Philosophy (Eng. tr.); art. in Brownson’s Quarterly Review (Boston, Mass.), xxi.; R. Mariano, La Philosophie contemporaine en Italie (1866); R. Seydel’s exhaustive article in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie. The centenary of Gioberti called forth several monographs in Italy.

GIOIOSA-IONICA, a town of Calabria, Italy, in the province of Reggio Calabria, from which it is 65 m. N.E. by rail, and 38 m. direct, 492 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) town, 9072; commune, 11,200. Near the station, which is on the E. coast of Calabria 3 m. below the town to the S.E., the remains of a theatre belonging to the Roman period were discovered in 1883; the orchestra was 46 ft. in diameter (Notizie degli scavi, 1883, p. 423). The ruins of an ancient building called the Naviglio, the nature of which does not seem clear, are described (ib. 1884, p. 252).

GIOJA, MELCHIORRE (1767-1829), Italian writer on philosophy and political economy, was born at Piacenza, on the 20th of September 1767. Originally intended for the church, he took orders, but renounced them in 1796 and went to Milan, where he devoted himself to the study of political economy. Having obtained the prize for an essay on “the kind of free government best adapted to Italy” he decided upon the career of a publicist. The arrival of Napoleon in Italy drew him into public life. He advocated a republic under the dominion of the French in a pamphlet I Tedeschi, i Francesi, ed i Russi in Lombardia, and under the Cisalpine Republic he was named historiographer and director of statistics. He was several times imprisoned, once for eight months in 1820 on a charge of being implicated in a conspiracy with the Carbonari. After the fall of Napoleon he retired into private life, and does not appear to have held office again. He died on the 2nd of January 1829. Gioja’s fundamental idea is the value of statistics or the collection of facts. Philosophy itself is with him classification and consideration of ideas. Logic he regarded as a practical art, and his Esercizioni logici has the further title, Art of deriving benefit from ill-constructed books. In ethics Gioja follows Bentham generally, and his large treatise Del merito e delle recompense (1818) is a clear and systematic view of social ethics from the utilitarian principle. In political economy this avidity for facts produced better fruits. The Nuovo Prospetto delle scienze economiche (1815-1817), although long to excess, and overburdened with classifications and tables, contains much valuable material. The author prefers large properties and large commercial undertakings to small ones, and strongly favours association as a means of production. He defends a restrictive policy and insists on the necessity of the action of the state as a regulating power in the industrial world. He was an opponent of ecclesiastical domination. He must be credited with the finest and most original treatment of division of labour since the Wealth of Nations. Much of what Babbage taught later on the subject of combined work is anticipated by Gioja. His theory of production is also deserving of attention from the fact that it takes into account and gives due prominence to immaterial goods. Throughout the work there is continuous opposition to Adam Smith. Gioja’s latest work Filosofia della statistica (2 vols., 1826; 4 vols., 1829-1830) contains in brief compass the essence of his ideas on human life, and affords the clearest insight into his aim and method in philosophy both theoretical and practical.

See monographs by G. D. Romagnosi (1829), F. Falco (1866); G. Pecchio, Storia dell’ economia pubblica in Italia (1829), and article in Ersch and Gruber’s Allgemeine Encyclopädie; for Gioja’s philosophy, L. Ferri, Essai sur l’histoire de la philosophie en Italie au XIXe siècle (1869); Ueberweg’s Hist. of Philosophy (Eng. tr., appendix ii.); A. Rosmini-Serbati, Opuscoli filosofici, iii. (1844) (containing an attack on Gioja’s “sensualism”); for his political economy, list of works in J. Conrad’s Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften (1892); L. Cossa, Introd. to Pol. Econ. (Eng. trans., p. 488). Gioja’s complete works were published at Lugano (1832-1849). He was one of the founders of the Annali universali di statistica.

GIOLITTI, GIOVANNI (1842- ), Italian statesman, was born at Mondovì on the 27th of October 1842. After a rapid career in the financial administration he was, in 1882, appointed councillor of state and elected to parliament. As deputy he chiefly acquired prominence by attacks on Magliani, treasury minister in the Depretis cabinet, and on the 9th of March 1889 was himself selected as treasury minister by Crispi. On the fall of the Rudinì cabinet in May 1892, Giolitti, with the help of a court clique, succeeded to the premiership. His term of office was marked by misfortune and misgovernment. The building crisis and the commercial rupture with France had impaired the situation of the state banks, of which one, the Banca Romana, had been further undermined by maladministration. A bank law, passed by Giolitti failed to effect an improvement. Moreover, he irritated public opinion by raising to senatorial rank the director-general of the Banca Romana, Signor Tanlongo, whose irregular practices had become a byword. The senate declined to admit Tanlongo, whom Giolitti, in consequence of an interpellation in parliament upon the condition of the Banca Romana, was obliged to arrest and prosecute. During the prosecution Giolitti abused his position as premier to abstract documents bearing on the case. Simultaneously a parliamentary commission of inquiry investigated the condition of the state banks. Its report, though acquitting Giolitti of personal dishonesty, proved disastrous to his political position, and obliged him to resign. His fall left the finances of the state disorganized, the pensions fund depleted, diplomatic relations with France strained in consequence of the massacre of Italian workmen at Aigues-Mortes, and Sicily and the Lunigiana in a state of revolt, which he had proved impotent to suppress. After his resignation he was impeached for abuse of power as minister, but the supreme court quashed the impeachment by denying the competence of the ordinary tribunals to judge ministerial acts. For several years he was compelled to play a passive part, having lost all credit. But by keeping in the background and giving public opinion time to forget his past, as well as by parliamentary intrigue, he gradually regained much of his former influence. He made capital of the Socialist agitation and of the repression to which other statesmen resorted, and gave the agitators to understand that were he premier they would be allowed a free hand. Thus he gained their favour, and on the fall of the Pelloux cabinet he became minister of the Interior in Zanardelli’s administration, of which he was the real head. His policy of never interfering in strikes and leaving even violent demonstrations undisturbed at first proved successful, but indiscipline and disorder grew to such a pitch that Zanardelli, already in bad health, resigned, and Giolitti succeeded him as prime minister (November 1903). But during his tenure of office he, too, had to resort to strong measures in repressing some serious disorders in various parts of Italy, and thus he lost the favour of the Socialists. In March 1905, feeling himself no longer secure, he resigned, indicating Fortis as his successor. When Sonnino became premier in February 1906, Giolitti did not openly oppose him, but his followers did, and Sonnino was defeated in May, Giolitti becoming prime minister once more.

GIORDANO, LUCA (1632-1705), Italian painter, was born in Naples, son of a very indifferent painter, Antonio, who imparted to him the first rudiments of drawing. Nature predestined him for the art, and at the age of eight he painted a cherub into one of his father’s pictures, a feat which was at once noised abroad, and induced the viceroy of Naples to recommend the child to Ribera. His father afterwards took him to Rome, to study under Pietro da Cortona. He acquired the nickname of Luca Fa-presto (Luke Work-fast). One might suppose this nickname to be derived merely from the almost miraculous celerity with which from an early age and throughout his life he handled the brush; but it is said to have had a more express origin. The father, we are told, poverty-stricken and greedy of gain, was perpetually urging his boy to exertion with the phrase, “Luca, fà presto.” The youth obeyed his parent to the letter, and would actually not so much as pause to snatch a hasty meal, but received into his mouth, while he still worked on, the food which his father’s hand supplied. He copied nearly twenty times the “Battle of Constantine” by Julio Romano, and with proportionate frequency several of the great works of Raphael and Michelangelo. His rapidity, which belonged as much to invention as to mere handiwork, and his versatility, which enabled him to imitate other painters deceptively, earned for him two other epithets, “The Thunderbolt” (Fulmine), and “The Proteus,” of Painting. He shortly visited all the main seats of the Italian school of art, and formed for himself a style combining in a certain measure the ornamental pomp of Paul Veronese and the contrasting compositions and large schemes of chiaroscuro of Pietro da Cortona. He was noted also for lively and showy colour. Returning to Naples, and accepting every sort of commission by which money was to be made, he practised his art with so much applause that Charles II. of Spain towards 1687 invited him over to Madrid, where he remained thirteen years. Giordano was very popular at the Spanish court, being a sprightly talker along with his other marvellously facile gifts, and the king created him a cavaliere. One anecdote of his rapidity of work is that the queen of Spain having one day made some inquiry about his wife, he at once showed Her Majesty what the lady was like by painting her portrait into the picture on which he was engaged. Soon after the death of Charles in 1700 Giordano, gorged with wealth, returned to Naples. He spent large sums in acts of munificence, and was particularly liberal to his poorer brethren of the art. He again visited various parts of Italy, and died in Naples on the 12th of January 1705, his last words being “O Napoli, sospiro mio” (O Naples, my heart’s love!). One of his maxims was that the good painter is the one whom the public like, and that the public are attracted more by colour than by design.

Giordano had an astonishing readiness and facility, in spite of the general commonness and superficiality of his performances. He left many works in Rome, and far more in Naples. Of the latter one of the most renowned is “Christ expelling the Traders from the Temple,” in the church of the Padri Girolamini, a colossal work, full of expressive lazzaroni; also the frescoes of S. Martino, and those in the Tesoro della Certosa, including the subject of “Moses and the Brazen Serpent”; and the cupola-paintings in the Church of S. Brigida, which contains the artist’s own tomb. In Spain he executed a surprising number of works,—continuing in the Escorial the series commenced by Cambiasi, and painting frescoes of the “Triumphs of the Church,” the “Genealogy and Life of the Madonna,” the stories of Moses, Gideon, David and Solomon, and the “Celebrated Women of Scripture,” all works of large dimensions. His pupils, Aniello Rossi and Matteo Pacelli, assisted him in Spain. In Madrid he worked more in oil-colour, a Nativity there being one of his best productions. Other superior examples are the “Judgment of Paris” in the Berlin Museum, and “Christ with the Doctors in the Temple,” in the Corsini Gallery of Rome. In Florence, in his closing days, he painted the Cappella Corsini, the Galleria Riccardi and other works. In youth he etched with considerable skill some of his own paintings, such as the “Slaughter of the Priests of Baal.” He also painted much on the crystal borderings of looking-glasses, cabinets, &c., seen in many Italian palaces, and was, in this form of art, the master of Pietro Garofolo. His best pupil, in painting of the ordinary kind, was Paolo de Matteis.

Bellori, in his Vite de’ pittori moderni, is a leading authority regarding Luca Giordano. P. Benvenuto (1882) has written a work on the Riccardi paintings.

GIORGIONE (1477-1510), Italian painter, was born at Castelfranco in 1477. In contemporary documents he is always called (according to the Venetian manner of pronunciation and spelling) Zorzi, Zorzo or Zorzon of Castelfranco. A tradition, having its origin in the 17th century, represented him as the natural son of some member of the great local family of the Barbarelli, by a peasant girl of the neighbouring village of Vedelago; consequently he is commonly referred to in histories and catalogues under the name of Giorgio Barbarelli or Barbarella. This tradition has, however, on close examination been proved baseless. On the other hand mention has been found in a contemporary document of an earlier Zorzon, a native of Vedelago, living in Castelfranco in 1460. Vasari, who wrote before the Barbarella legend had sprung up, says that Giorgione was of very humble origin. It seems probable that he was simply the son or grandson of the afore-mentioned Zorzon the elder; that the after-claim of the Barbarelli to kindred with him was a mere piece of family vanity, very likely suggested by the analogous case of Leonardo da Vinci; and that, this claim once put abroad, the peasant-mother of Vedelago was invented on the ground of some dim knowledge that his real progenitors came from that village.

Of the facts of his life we are almost as meagrely informed as of the circumstances of his birth. The little city, or large fortified village, for it is scarcely more, of Castelfranco in the Trevisan stands in the midst of a rich and broken plain at some distance from the last spurs of the Venetian Alps. From the natural surroundings of Giorgione’s childhood was no doubt derived his ideal of pastoral scenery, the country of pleasant copses, glades, brooks and hills amid which his personages love to wander or recline with lute and pipe. How early in boyhood he went to Venice we do not know, but internal evidence supports the statement of Ridolfi that he served his apprenticeship there under Giovanni Bellini; and there he made his fame and had his home. That his gifts were early recognized we know from the facts, recorded in contemporary documents, that in 1500, when he was only twenty-three (that is if Vasari gives rightly the age at which he died), he was chosen to paint portraits of the Doge Agostino Barberigo and the condottiere Consalvo Ferrante; that in 1504 he was commissioned to paint an altarpiece in memory of Matteo Costanzo in the cathedral of his native town, Castelfranco; that in 1507 he received at the order of the Council of Ten part payment for a picture (subject not mentioned) on which he was engaged for the Hall of the Audience in the ducal palace; and that in 1507-1508 he was employed, with other artists of his own generation, to decorate with frescoes the exterior of the newly rebuilt Fondaco dei Tedeschi or German merchants’ hall at Venice, having already done similar work on the exterior of the Casa Soranzo, the Casa Grimani alii Servi and other Venetian palaces. Vasari gives also as an important event in Giorgione’s life, and one which had influence on his work, his meeting with Leonardo da Vinci on the occasion of the Tuscan master’s visit to Venice in 1500. In September or October 1510 he died of the plague then raging in the city, and within a few days of his death we find the great art-patroness and amateur, Isabella d’Este, writing from Mantua and trying in vain to secure for her collection a night-piece by his hand of which the fame had reached her.

All accounts agree in representing Giorgione as a personage of distinguished and romantic charm, a great lover, a great musician, made to enjoy in life and to express in art to the uttermost the delight, the splendour, the sensuous and imaginative grace and fulness, not untinged with poetic melancholy, of the Venetian existence of his time. They represent him further as having made in Venetian painting an advance analogous to that made in Tuscan painting by Leonardo more than twenty years before; that is as having released the art from the last shackles of archaic rigidity and placed it in possession of full freedom and the full mastery of its means. He also introduced a new range of subjects. Besides altarpieces and portraits he painted pictures that told no story, whether biblical or classical, or if they professed to tell such, neglected the action and simply embodied in form and colour moods of lyrical or romantic feeling, much as a musician might embody them in sounds. Innovating with the courage and felicity of genius, he had for a time an overwhelming influence on his contemporaries and immediate successors in the Venetian school, including Titian, Sebastian del Piombo, the elder Palma, Cariani and the two Campagnolas, and not a little even on seniors of long-standing fame such as Giovanni Bellini. His name and work have exercised, and continue to exercise, no less a spell on posterity. But to identify and define, among the relics of his age and school, precisely what that work is, and to distinguish it from the kindred work of other men whom his influence inspired, is a very difficult matter. There are inclusive critics who still claim for Giorgione nearly every painting of the time that at all resembles his manner, and there are exclusive critics who pare down to some ten or a dozen the list of extant pictures which they will admit to be actually his.

To name first those which are either certain or command the most general acceptance, placing them in something like an approximate and probable order of date. In the Uffizi at Florence are two companion pieces of the “Trial of Moses” and the “Judgment of Solomon,” the latter the finer and better preserved of the two, which pass, no doubt justly, as typical works of Giorgione’s youth, and exhibit, though not yet ripely, his special qualities of colour-richness and landscape romance, the peculiar facial types of his predilection, with the pure form of forehead, fine oval of cheek, and somewhat close-set eyes and eyebrows, and the intensity of that still and brooding sentiment with which, rather than with dramatic life and movement, he instinctively invests his figures. Probably the earliest of the portraits by common consent called his is the beautiful one of a young man at Berlin. His earliest devotional picture would seem to be the highly finished “Christ bearing his Cross” (the head and shoulders only, with a peculiarly serene and high-bred cast of features) formerly at Vicenza and now in the collection of Mrs Gardner at Boston. Other versions of this picture exist, and it has been claimed that one in private possession at Vienna is the true original: erroneously in the judgment of the present writer. Another “Christ bearing the Cross,” with a Jew dragging at the rope round his neck, in the church of San Rocco at Venice, is a ruined but genuine work, quoted by Vasari and Ridolfi, and copied with the name of Giorgione appended, by Van Dyck in that master’s Chatsworth sketch-book. (Vasari gives it to Giorgione in his first and to Titian in his second edition.) The composition of a lost early picture of the birth of Paris is preserved in an engraving of the “Teniers Gallery” series, and an old copy of part of the same picture is at Budapest. In the Giovanelli Palace at Venice is that fascinating and enigmatical mythology or allegory, known to the Anonimo Morelliano, who saw it in 1530 in the house of Gabriel Vendramin, simply as “the small landscape with the storm, the gipsy woman and the soldier”; the picture is conjecturally interpreted by modern authorities as illustrating a passage in Statius which describes the meeting of Adrastus with Hypsipyle when she was serving as nurse with the king of Nemea. Still belonging to the earlier part of the painter’s brief career is a beautiful, virginally pensive Judith at St Petersburg, which passed under various alien names, as Raphael, Moretto, &c., until its kindred with the unquestioned work of Giorgione was in late years firmly established. The great Castelfranco altarpiece, still, in spite of many restorations, one of the most classically pure and radiantly impressive works of Renaissance painting, may be taken as closing the earlier phase of the young master’s work (1504). It shows the Virgin loftily enthroned on a plain, sparely draped stone structure with St Francis and a warrior saint (St Liberale) standing in attitudes of great simplicity on either side of the foot of the throne, a high parapet behind them, and a beautiful landscape of the master’s usual type seen above it. Nearly akin to this masterpiece, not in shape or composition but by the type of the Virgin and the very Bellinesque St Francis, is the altarpiece of the Madonna with St Francis and St Roch at Madrid. Of the master’s fully ripened time is the fine and again enigmatical picture formerly in the house of Taddeo Contarini at Venice, described by contemporary witnesses as the “Three Philosophers,” and now, on slender enough grounds, supposed to represent Evander showing Aeneas the site of Troy as narrated in the eighth Aeneid. The portrait of a knight of Malta in the Uffizi at Florence has more power and authority, if less sentiment, than the earlier example at Berlin, and may be taken to be of the master’s middle time. Most entirely central and typical of all Giorgione’s extant works is the Sleeping Venus at Dresden, first recognized by Morelli, and now universally accepted, as being the same as the picture seen by the Anonimo and later by Ridolfi in the Casa Marcello at Venice. An exquisitely pure and severe rhythm of line and contour chastens the sensuous richness of the presentment: the sweep of white drapery on which the goddess lies, and of glowing landscape that fills the space behind her, most harmoniously frame her divinity. It is recorded that the master left this piece unfinished and that the landscape, with a Cupid which subsequent restoration has removed, were completed after his death by Titian. The picture is the prototype of Titian’s own Venus at the Uffizi and of many more by other painters of the school; but none of them attained the quality of the first exemplar. Of such small scenes of mixed classical mythology and landscape as early writers attribute in considerable number to Giorgione, there have survived at least two which bear strong evidences of his handiwork, though the action is in both of unwonted liveliness, namely the Apollo and Daphne of the Seminario at Venice and the Orpheus and Eurydice of Bergamo. The portrait of Antonio Grocardo at Budapest represents his fullest and most penetrating power in that branch of art. In his last years the purity and relative slenderness of form which mark his earlier female nudes, including the Dresden Venus, gave way to ideals of ampler mould, more nearly approaching those of Titian and his successors in Venetian art; as is proved by those last remaining fragments of the frescoes on the Grand Canal front of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi which were seen and engraved by Zanetti in 1760, but have now totally disappeared. Such change of ideal is apparent enough in the famous “Concert” or “Pastoral Symphony” of the Louvre, probably the latest, and certainly one of the most characteristic and harmoniously splendid, of Giorgione’s creations that has come down to us, and has caused some critics too hastily to doubt its authenticity.

We pass now to pictures for which some affirm and others deny the right to bear Giorgione’s name. As youthful in style as the two early pictures in the Uffizi, and closely allied to them in feeling, though less so in colour, is an unexplained subject in the National Gallery, sometimes called for want of a better title the “Golden Age”; this is officially and by many critics given only to the “school of” Giorgione, but may not unreasonably be claimed for his own work (No. 1173). There is also in England a group of three paintings which are certainly by one hand, and that a hand very closely related to Giorgione if not actually his own, namely the small oblong “Adoration of the Magi” in the National Gallery (No. 1160), the “Adoration of the Shepherds” belonging to Lord Allendale (with its somewhat inferior but still attractive replica at Vienna), and the small “Holy Family” in the collection of Mr R. H. Benson. The type of the Madonna in all these three pieces is different from that customary with the master, but there seems no reason why he should not at some particular moment have changed his model. The sentiment and gestures of the figures, the cast of draperies, the technical handling, and especially, in Lord Allendale’s picture, the romantic richness of the landscape, all incline us to accept the group as original, notwithstanding the deviation of type already mentioned and certain weaknesses of drawing and proportion which we should have hardly looked for. Better known to European students in general are the two fine pictures commonly given to the master at the Pitti gallery in Florence, namely the “Three Ages” and the “Concert.” Both are very Giorgionesque, the “Three Ages” leaning rather towards the early manner of Lorenzo Lotto, to whom by some critics it is actually given. The “Concert” is held on technical grounds by some of the best judges rather to bear the character of Titian at the moment when the inspiration of Giorgione was strongest on him, at least so far as concerns the extremely beautiful and expressive central figure of the monk playing on the clavichord with reverted head, a very incarnation of musical rapture and yearning—the other figures are too much injured to judge.

There are at least two famous single portraits as to which critics will probably never agree whether they are among the later works of Giorgione or among the earliest of Titian under his influence: these are the jovial and splendid half-length of Catherine Cornaro (or a stout lady much resembling her) with a bas-relief, in the collection of Signor Crespi at Milan, and the so-called “Ariosto” from Lord Darnley’s collection acquired for the National Gallery in 1904. Ancient and half-effaced inscriptions, of which there is no cause to doubt the genuineness, ascribe them both to Titian; both, to the mind of the present writer at least, are more nearly akin to such undoubted early Titians as the “Man with the Book” at Hampton Court and the “Man with the Glove” at the Louvre than to any authenticated work of Giorgione. At the same time it should be remembered that Giorgione is known to have actually enjoyed the patronage of Catherine Cornaro and to have painted her portrait. The Giorgionesque influence and feeling, to a degree almost of sentimental exaggeration, encounter us again in another beautiful Venetian portrait at the National Gallery which has sometimes been claimed for him, that of a man in crimson velvet with white pleated shirt and a background of bays, long attributed to the elder Palma (No. 636). The same qualities are present with more virility in a very striking portrait of a young man at Temple Newsam, which stands indeed nearer than any other extant example to the Brocardo portrait at Budapest. The full-face portrait of a woman in the Borghese gallery at Rome has the marks of the master’s design and inspiration, but in its present sadly damaged condition can hardly be claimed for his handiwork. The head of a boy with a pipe at Hampton Court, a little over life size, has been enthusiastically claimed as Giorgione’s workmanship, but is surely too slack and soft in handling to be anything more than an early copy of a lost work, analogous to, though better than, the similar copy at Vienna of a young man with an arrow, a subject he is known to have painted. The early records prove indeed that not a few such copies of Giorgione’s more admired works were produced in his own time or shortly afterwards. One of the most interesting and unmistakable such copies still extant is the picture formerly in the Manfrin collection at Venice, afterwards in that of Mr Barker in London, and now at Dresden, which is commonly called “The Horoscope,” and represents a woman seated near a classic ruin with a young child at her feet, an armed youth standing looking down at them, and a turbaned sage seated near with compasses, disk and book. Of important subject pictures belonging to the debatable borderland between Giorgione and his imitators are the large and interesting unfinished “Judgment of Solomon” at Kingston Lacy, which must certainly be the same that Ridolfi saw and attributed to him in the Casa Grimani at Venice, but has weaknesses of design and drawing sufficiently baffling to criticism; and the “Woman taken in Adultery” in the public gallery at Glasgow, a picture truly Giorgionesque in richness of colour, but betraying in its awkward composition, the relative coarseness of its types and the insincere, mechanical animation of its movements, the hand of some lesser master of the school, almost certainly (by comparison with his existing engravings and woodcuts) that of Domenico Campagnola. It seems unnecessary to refer, in the present notice, to any of the numerous other and inferior works which have been claimed for Giorgione by a criticism unable to distinguish between a living voice and its echoes.

Bibliography.—Morelli, Notizie, &c. (ed. Frizzoni, 1884): Vasari (ed. Milanesi), vol. iv.; Ridolfi, Le Maraviglie dell’ arte, vol. i.; Zanetti, Varie Pitture (1760); Crowe-Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in North Italy; Morelli, Kunstkritische Studien; Gronau, Zorzon da Castelfranco, la sua origine, &c. (1894); Herbert Cook, Giorgione (in “Great Masters” series, 1900); Ugo Monneret de Villard, Giorgione da Castelfranco (1905). The two last-named works are critically far too inclusive, but useful as going over the whole ground of discussion, with full references to earlier authorities, &c.

(S. C.)

GIOTTINO (1324-1357), an early Florentine painter. Vasari is the principal authority in regard to this artist; but it is not by any means easy to bring the details of his narrative into harmony with such facts as can now be verified. It would appear that there was a painter of the name of Tommaso (or Maso) di Stefano termed Giottino; and the Giottino of Vasari is said to have been born in 1324, and to have died early, of consumption, in 1357,—dates which must be regarded as open to considerable doubt. Stefano, the father of Tommaso, was himself a celebrated painter in the early revival of art; his naturalism was indeed so highly appreciated by contemporaries as to earn him the appellation of “Scimia della Natura” (ape of nature). He, it seems, instructed his son, who, however, applied himself with greater predilection to studying the works of the great Giotto, formed his style on these, and hence was called Giottino. It is even said that Giottino was really the son (others say the great-grandson) of Giotto. To this statement little or no importance can be attached. To Maso di Stefano, or Giottino, Vasari and Ghiberti attribute the frescoes in the chapel of S. Silvestro (or of the Bardi family) in the Florentine church of S. Croce; these represent the miracles of Pope S. Silvestro as narrated in the “Golden Legend,” one conspicuous subject being the sealing of the lips of a malignant dragon. These works are animated and firm in drawing, with naturalism carried further than by Giotto. From the evidence of style, some modern connoisseurs assign to the same hand the paintings in the funeral vault of the Strozzi family, below the Cappella degli Spagnuoli in the church of S. Maria Novella, representing the crucifixion and other subjects. Vasari ascribes also to his Giottino the frescoes of the life of St Nicholas in the lower church of Assisi. This series, however, is not really in that part of the church which Vasari designates, but is in the chapel of the Sacrament; and the works in that chapel are understood to be by Giotto di Stefano, who worked in the second half of the 14th century—very excellent productions of their period. They are much damaged, and the style is hardly similar to that of the Sylvester frescoes. It might hence be inferred that two different men produced the works which are unitedly fathered upon the half-legendary “Giottino,” the consumptive youth, solitary and melancholic, but passionately devoted to his art. A large number of other works have been attributed to the same hand; we need only mention an “Apparition of the Virgin to St Bernard,” in the Florentine Academy; a lost painting, very popular in its day, commemorating the expulsion, which took place in 1343, of the duke of Athens from Florence; and a marble statue erected on the Florentine campanile. Vasari particularly praises Giottino for well-blended chiaroscuro.

GIOTTO [Giotto di Bondone1] (1267?-1337), Italian painter, was born at Vespignano in the Mugello, a few miles north of Florence, according to one account in 1276, and according to another, which from the few known circumstances of his life seems more likely to be correct, in 1266 or 1267. His father was a landowner at Colle in the commune of Vespignano, described in a contemporary document as vir praeclarus, but by biographers both early and late as a poor peasant; probably therefore a peasant proprietor of no large possessions but of reputable stock and descent. It is impossible to tell whether there is any truth in the legend of Giotto’s boyhood which relates how he first showed his disposition for art, and attracted the attention of Cimabue, by being found drawing one of his father’s sheep with a sharp stone on the face of a smooth stone or slate. With his father’s consent, the story goes on, Cimabue carried off the boy to be his apprentice, and it was under Cimabue’s tuition that Giotto took his first steps in the art of which he was afterwards to be the great emancipator and renovator. The place where these early steps can still, according to tradition, be traced, is in the first and second, reckoning downwards, of the three courses of frescoes which adorn the walls of the nave in the Upper Church of St Francis at Assisi. These frescoes represent subjects of the Old and New Testament, and great labour, too probably futile, has been spent in trying to pick out those in which the youthful handiwork of Giotto can be discerned, as it is imagined, among that of Cimabue and his other pupils. But the truth is that the figure of Cimabue himself, in spite of Dante’s testimony to his having been the foremost painter of Italy until Giotto arose, has under the search-light of modern criticism melted into almost mythical vagueness. His accepted position as Giotto’s instructor and the pioneer of reform in his art has been attacked from several sides as a mere invention of Florentine writers for the glorification of their own city. One group of critics maintain that the real advance in Tuscan painting before Giotto was the work of the Sienese school and not of the Florentine. Another group contend that the best painting done in Italy down to the last decade of the 13th century was not done by Tuscan hands at all, but by Roman craftsmen trained in the inherited principles of Italo-Byzantine decoration in mosaic and fresco, and that from such Roman craftsmen alone could Giotto have learnt anything worth his learning. The debate thus opened is far from closed, and considering how scanty, ambiguous and often defaced are the materials existing for discussion, it is perhaps never likely to be closed. But there is no debate as to the general nature of the reform effected by the genius of Giotto himself. He was the great humanizer of painting; it is his glory to have been the first among his countrymen to breathe life into wall-pictures and altar-pieces, and to quicken the dead conventionalism of inherited practice with the fire of natural action and natural feeling. Upon yet another point there is no question; and that is that the reform thus effected by Giotto in painting had been anticipated in the sister art of sculpture by nearly a whole generation. About the middle of the 13th century Nicola Pisano had renewed that art, first by strict imitation of classical models, and later by infusing into his work a fresh spirit of nature and humanity, perhaps partly caught from the Gothic schools of France. His son Giovanni had carried the same re-vitalising of sculpture a great deal further; and hence to some critics it would seem that the real inspirer and precursor of Giotto was Giovanni Pisano the sculptor, and not any painter or wall-decorator, whether of Florence, Siena or Rome.

In this division of opinion it is safer to regard the revival of painting in Giotto’s hands simply as part of the general awakening of the time, and to remember that, as of all Italian communities Florence was the keenest in every form of activity both intellectual and practical, so it was natural that a son of Florence should be the chief agent in such an awakening. And in considering his career the question of his possible participation in the primitive frescoes of the upper courses at Assisi is best left out of account, the more so because of the deplorable condition in which they now exist. But with reference to the lowest course of paintings on the same walls, those illustrating the life of St Francis according to the narrative of St Bonaventura, no one has any doubt, at least in regard to nineteen or twenty of the twenty-eight subjects which compose the series, that Giotto himself was their designer and chief executant. In these, sadly as they too have suffered from time and wholesale repair, there can nevertheless be discerned the unmistakable spirit of the young Florentine master as we know him in his other works—his shrewd realistic and dramatic vigour, the deep sincerity and humanity of feeling which he knows how to express in every gesture of his figures without breaking up the harmony of their grouping or the grandeur of their linear design, qualities inherited from the earlier schools of impressive but lifeless hieratic decoration. The “Renunciation of the Saint by his Father,” the “Pope’s Dream of the Saint upholding the tottering Church,” the “Saint before the Sultan,” the “Miracle of the Spring of Water,” the “Death of the Nobleman of Celano,” the “Saint preaching before Pope Honorius”—these are some of the most noted and best preserved examples of the painter’s power in this series. Where doubt begins again is as to the relations of date and sequence which the series bears to other works by the master executed at Assisi and at Rome in the same early period of his career, that is, probably between 1295 and 1300. Giotto’s remaining undisputed works at Assisi are the four celebrated allegorical compositions in honour of St Francis in the vaulting of the Lower Church,—the “Marriage of St Francis to Poverty,” the “Allegory of Chastity,” the “Allegory of Obedience” and the “Vision of St Francis in Glory.” These works are scarcely at all retouched, and relatively little dimmed by time; they are of a singular beauty, at once severe and tender, both in colour and design; the compositions, especially the first three, fitted with admirable art into the cramped spaces of the vaulting, the subjects, no doubt in the main dictated to the artist by his Franciscan employers, treated in no cold or mechanical spirit but with a full measure of vital humanity and original feeling. Had the career and influence of St Francis had no other of their vast and far-reaching effects in the world than that of inspiring these noble works of art, they would still have been entitled to no small gratitude from mankind. Other works at Assisi which most modern critics, but not all, attribute to Giotto himself are three miracles of St Francis and portions of a group of frescoes illustrating the history of Mary Magdalene, both in the Lower Church; and again, in one of the transepts of the same Lower Church, a series of ten frescoes of the Life of the Virgin and Christ, concluding with the Crucifixion. It is to be remarked as to this transept series that several of the frescoes present not only the same subjects, but with a certain degree of variation the same compositions, as are found in the master’s great series executed in the Arena chapel at Padua in the fullness of his powers about 1306; and that the versions in the Assisi transept show a relatively greater degree of technical accomplishment than the Paduan versions, with a more attractive charm and more abundance of accessory ornament, but a proportionately less degree of that simple grandeur in composition and direct strength of human motive which are the special notes of Giotto’s style. Therefore a minority of critics refuse to accept the modern attribution of this transept series to Giotto himself, and see in it later work by an accomplished pupil softening and refining upon his master’s original creations at Padua. Others, insisting that these unquestionably beautiful works must be by the hand of Giotto and none but Giotto, maintain that in comparison with the Paduan examples they illustrate a gradual progress, which can be traced in other of his extant works, from the relatively ornate and soft to the austerely grand and simple. This argument is enforced by comparison with early work of the master’s at Rome as to the date of which we have positive evidence. In 1298 Giotto completed for Cardinal Stefaneschi for the price of 2200 gold ducats a mosaic of Christ saving St Peter from the waves (the celebrated “Navicella”); this is still to be seen, but in a completely restored and transformed state, in the vestibule of St Peter’s. For the same patron he executed, probably just before the “Navicella,” an elaborate ciborium or altar-piece for the high altar of St Peter’s, for which he received 800 ducats. It represents on the principal face a colossal Christ enthroned with adoring angels beside him and a kneeling donor at his feet, and the martyrdoms of St Peter and St Paul on separate panels to right and left; on the reverse is St Peter attended by St George and other saints, receiving from the donor a model of his gift, with stately full-length figures of two apostles to right and two to left, besides various accessory scenes and figures in the predellas and the margins. The separated parts of this altar-piece are still to be seen, in a quite genuine though somewhat tarnished condition, in the sacristy of St Peter’s. A third work by the master at Rome is a repainted fragment at the Lateran of a fresco of Pope Boniface VIII. proclaiming the jubilee of 1300. The “Navicella” and the Lateran fragment are too much ruined to argue from; but the ciborium panels, it is contended, combine with the aspects of majesty and strength a quality of ornate charm and suavity such as is remarked in the transept frescoes of Assisi. The sequence proposed for these several works is accordingly, first the St Peter’s ciborium, next the allegories in the vaulting of the Lower Church, next the three frescoes of St Francis’ miracles in the north transept, next the St Francis series in the Upper Church; and last, perhaps after an interval and with the help of pupils, the scenes from the life of Mary Magdalene in her chapel in the Lower Church. This involves a complete reversal of the prevailing view, which regards the unequal and sometimes clumsy compositions of this St Francis series as the earliest independent work of the master. It must be admitted that there is something paradoxical in the idea of a progress from the manner of the Lower Church transept series of the life of Christ to the much ruder manner of the Upper Church series of St Francis.

A kindred obscurity and little less conflict of opinion await the inquirer at almost all stages of Giotto’s career. In 1841 there were partially recovered from the whitewash that had overlain them a series of frescoes executed in the chapel of the Magdalene, in the Bargello or Palace of the Podestà at Florence, to celebrate (as was supposed) a pacification between the Black and White parties in the state effected by the Cardinal d’Acquasparta as delegate of the pope in 1302. In them are depicted a series of Bible scenes, besides great compositions of Hell and Paradise, and in the Paradise are introduced portraits of Dante, Brunetto Latini and Corso Donato. These recovered fragments, freely “restored” as soon as they were disclosed, were acclaimed as the work of Giotto and long held in especial regard for the sake of the portrait of Dante. Latterly it has been shown that if Giotto ever executed them at all, which is doubtful, it must have been at a later date than the supposed pacification, and that they must have suffered grievous injury in the fire which destroyed a great part of the building in 1332, and been afterwards repainted by some well-trained follower of the school. To about 1302 or 1303 would belong, if there is truth in it, the familiar story of Giotto’s O. Pope Benedict XI., the successor of Boniface VIII., sent, as the tale runs, a messenger to bring him proofs of the painter’s powers. Giotto would give no other sample of his talent than an O drawn with a free sweep of the brush from the elbow; but the pope was satisfied and engaged him at a great salary to go and adorn with frescoes the papal residence at Avignon. Benedict, however, dying at this time (1305), nothing came of this commission; and the remains of Italian 14th-century frescoes still to be seen at Avignon are now recognized as the work, not, as was long supposed, of Giotto, but of the Sienese Simone Martini and his school.

At this point in Giotto’s life we come to the greatest by far of his undestroyed and undisputed enterprises, and one which can with some certainty be dated. This is the series of frescoes with which he decorated the entire internal walls of the chapel built at Padua in honour of the Virgin of the Annunciation by a rich citizen of the town, Enrico Scrovegni, perhaps in order to atone for the sins of his father, a notorious usurer whom Dante places in the seventh circle of hell. The building is on the site of an ancient amphitheatre, and is therefore generally called the chapel of the Arena. Since it is recorded that Dante was Giotto’s guest at Padua, and since we know that it was in 1306 that the poet came from Bologna to that city, we may conclude that to the same year, 1306, belongs the beginning of Giotto’s great undertaking in the Arena chapel. The scheme includes a Saviour in Glory over the altar, a Last Judgment, full of various and impressive incident, occupying the whole of the entrance wall, with a series of subjects from the Old and New Testament and the apocryphal Life of Christ painted in three tiers on either side wall, and lowest of all a fourth tier with emblematic Virtues and Vices in monochrome; the Virtues being on the side of the chapel next the incidents of redemption in the entrance fresco of the Last Judgment, the Vices on the side next the incidents of perdition. A not improbable tradition asserts that Giotto was helped by Dante in the choice and disposition of the subjects. The frescoes, though not free from injury and retouching, are upon the whole in good condition, and nowhere else can the highest powers of the Italian mind and hand at the beginning of the 14th century be so well studied as here. At the close of the middle ages we find Giotto laying the foundation upon which all the progress of the Renaissance was afterwards securely based. In his day the knowledge possessed by painters of the human frame and its structure rested only upon general observation and not upon detailed or scientific study; while to facts other than those of humanity their observation had never been closely directed. Of linear perspective they possessed but elementary and empirical ideas, and their endeavours to express aerial perspective and deal with the problems of light and shade were rare and partial. As far as painting could possibly be carried under these conditions, it was carried by Giotto. In its choice of subjects, his art is entirely subservient to the religious spirit of his age. Even in its mode of conceiving and arranging those subjects it is in part still trammelled by the rules and consecrated traditions of the past. Many of those truths of nature to which the painters of succeeding generations learned to give accurate and complete expression, Giotto was only able to express by way o£ imperfect symbol and suggestion. But among the elements of art over which he has control he maintains so just a balance that his work produces in the spectator less sense of imperfection than that of many later and more accomplished masters. In some particulars his mature painting, as we see it in the Arena chapel, has never been surpassed—in mastery of concise and expressive generalized line and of inventive and harmonious decorative tint; in the judicious division of the field and massing and scattering of groups; in the combination of high gravity with complete frankness in conception, and the union of noble dignity in the types with direct and vital truth in the gestures of the personages.

The frescoes of the Arena chapel must have been a labour of years, and of the date of their termination we have no proof. Of many other works said to have been executed by Giotto at Padua, all that remains consists of some scarce recognizable traces in the chapter-house of the great Franciscan church of St Antonio. For twenty years or more we lose all authentic data as to Giotto’s doings and movements. Vasari, indeed, sends him on a giddy but in the main evidently fabulous round of travels, including a sojourn in France, which it is certain he never made. Besides Padua, he is said to have resided and left great works at Ferrara, Ravenna, Urbino, Rimini, Faenza, Lucca and other cities; in some of them paintings of his school are still shown, but nothing which can fairly be claimed to be by his hand. It is recorded also that he was much employed in his native city of Florence; but the vandalism of later generations has effaced nearly all that he did there. Among works whitewashed over by posterity were the frescoes with which he covered no less than five chapels in the church of Santa Croce. Two of these, the chapels of the Bardi and the Peruzzi families, were scraped in the early part of the 19th century, and very important remains were uncovered and immediately subjected to a process of restoration which has robbed them of half their authenticity. But through the ruins of time we can trace in some of these Santa Croce frescoes all the qualities of Giotto’s work at an even higher and more mature development than in the best examples at Assisi or Padua. The frescoes of the Bardi chapel tell again the story of St Francis, to which so much of his best power had already been devoted; those of the Peruzzi chapel deal with the lives of St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist. Such scenes as the Funeral of St Francis, the Dance of Herodias’s Daughter, and the Resurrection of St John the Evangelist, which have to some extent escaped the disfigurements of the restorer, are among acknowledged classics of the world’s art. The only clues to the dates of any of these works are to be found in the facts that among the figures in the Bardi chapel occurs that of St Louis of Toulouse, who was not canonized till 1317, therefore the painting must be subsequent to that year, and that the “Dance of Salome” must have been painted before 1331, when it was copied by the Lorenzetti at Siena. The only other extant works of Giotto at Florence are a fine “Crucifix,” not undisputed, at San Marco, and the majestic but somewhat heavy altar-piece of the Madonna, probably an early work, which is placed in the Academy beside a more primitive Madonna supposed to be the work of Cimabue.

Towards the end of Giotto’s life we escape again from confused legend, and from the tantalizing record of works which have not survived for us to verify, into the region of authentic document and fact. It appears that Giotto had come under the notice of Duke Charles of Calabria, son of King Robert of Naples, during the visits of the duke to Florence which took place between 1326 and 1328, in which year he died. Soon afterwards Giotto must have gone to King Robert’s court at Naples, where he was enrolled as an honoured guest and member of the household by a royal decree dated the 20th of January 1330. Another document shows him to have been still at Naples two years later. Tradition says much about the friendship of the king for the painter and the freedom of speech and jest allowed him; much also of the works he carried out at Naples in the Castel Nuovo, the Castel dell’ Uovo, and the church and convent of Sta Chiara. Not a trace of these works remains; and others which later criticism have claimed for him in a hall which formerly belonged to the convent of Sta Chiara have been proved not to be his.

Meantime Giotto had been advancing, not only in years and worldly fame, but in prosperity. He was married young, and had, so far as is recorded, three sons, Francesco, Niccola and Donato, and three daughters, Bice, Caterina and Lucia. He had added by successive purchases to the plot of land inherited from his father at Vespignano. His fellow-citizens of all occupations and degrees delighted to honour him. And now, in his sixty-eighth year (if we accept the birth-date 1266/7), on his return from Naples by way of Gaeta, he received the final and official testimony to the esteem in which he was held at Florence. By a solemn decree of the Priori on the 12th of April 1334, he was appointed master of the works of the cathedral of Sta Reparata (later and better known as Sta Maria del Fiore) and official architect of the city walls and the towns within her territory. What training as a practical architect his earlier career had afforded him we do not know, but his interest in the art from the beginning is made clear by the carefully studied architectural backgrounds of many of his frescoes. Dying on the 8th of January 1336 (old style 1337), Giotto only enjoyed his new dignities for two years. But in the course of them he had found time not only to make an excursion to Milan, on the invitation of Azzo Visconti and with the sanction of his own government, but to plan two great architectural works at Florence and superintend the beginning of their execution, namely the west front of the cathedral and its detached campanile or bell-tower. The unfinished enrichments of the cathedral front were stripped away in a later age. The foundation-stone of the Campanile was laid with solemn ceremony in the presence of a great concourse of magistrates and people on the 18th of July 1334. Its lower courses seem to have been completed from Giotto’s design, and the first course of its sculptured ornaments (the famous series of primitive Arts and Industries) actually by his own hand, before his death. It is not clear what modifications of his design were made by Andrea Pisano, who was appointed to succeed him, or again by Francesco Talenti, to whom the work was next entrusted; but the incomparable structure as we now see it stands justly in the world’s esteem as the most fitting monument to the genius who first conceived and directed it.

The art of painting, as re-created by Giotto, was carried on throughout Italy by his pupils and successors with little change or development for nearly a hundred years, until a new impulse was given to art by the combined influences of naturalism and classicism in the hands of men like Donatello and Masaccio. Most of the anecdotes related of the master are probably inaccurate in detail, but the general character both as artist and man which tradition has agreed in giving him can never be assailed. He was from the first a kind of popular hero. He is celebrated by the poet Petrarch and by the historian Villani. He is made the subject of tales and anecdotes by Boccaccio and by Franco Sacchetti. From these notices, as well as from Vasari, we gain a distinct picture of the man, as one whose nature was in keeping with his country origin; whose sturdy frame and plain features corresponded to a character rather distinguished for shrewd and genial strength than for sublimer or more ascetic qualities; a master craftsman, to whose strong combining and inventing powers nothing came amiss; conscious of his own deserts, never at a loss either in the things of art or in the things of life, and equally ready and efficient whether he has to design the scheme of some great spiritual allegory in colour or imperishable monument in stone, or whether he has to show his wit in the encounter of practical jest and repartee. From his own hand we have a contribution to literature which helps to substantiate this conception of his character. A large part of Giotto’s fame as painter was won in the service of the Franciscans, and in the pictorial celebration of the life and ordinances of their founder. As is well known, it was a part of the ordinances of Francis that his disciples should follow his own example in worshipping and being wedded to poverty,—poverty idealized and personified as a spiritual bride and mistress. Giotto, having on the commission of the order given the noblest pictorial embodiment to this and other aspects of the Franciscan doctrine, presently wrote an ode in which his own views on poverty are expressed; and in this he shows that, if on the one hand his genius was at the service of the ideals of his time, and his imagination open to their significance, on the other hand his judgment was shrewdly and humorously awake to their practical dangers and exaggerations.

Authorities.—Ghiberti, Commentari; Vasari, Le Vite, vol. i.; Crowe-Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in Italy, ed. Langton Douglas (1903); H. Thode, Giotto (1899); M. G. Zimmermann, Giotto und die Kunst Italiens im Mittelalter (1899); B. Berenson, Florentine Painters of the Renaissance; F. Mason Perkin, Giotto (in “Great Masters” series) (1902); Basil de Sélincourt, Giotto (1905).

(S. C.)

1 Not to be confused with Giotto di Buondone, a contemporary citizen and politician of Siena.

GIPSIES, or Gypsies, a wandering folk scattered through every European land, over the greater part of western Asia and Siberia; found also in Egypt and the northern coast of Africa, in America and even in Australia. No correct estimate of their numbers outside of Europe can be given, and even in Europe the information derived from official statistics is often contradictory and unreliable. The only country in which the figures have been given correctly is Hungary. In 1893 there were 274,940 in Transleithania, of whom 243,432 were settled, 20,406 only partly settled and 8938 nomads. Of these 91,603 spoke the Gipsy language in 1890, but the rest had already been assimilated. Next in numbers stands Rumania, the number varying between 250,000 and 200,000 (1895). Turkey in Europe counted 117,000 (1903), of whom 51,000 were in Bulgaria and Eastern Rumelia, 22,000 in the vilayet of Adrianople and 2500 in the vilayet of Kossovo. In Asiatic Turkey the estimates vary between 67,000 and 200,000. Servia has 41,000; Bosnia and Herzegovina, 18,000; Greece, 10,000; Austria (Cisleithania), 16,000, of whom 13,500 are in Bohemia and Moravia; Germany, 2000; France, 2000 (5000?); Basque Provinces, 500 to 700; Italy, 32,000; Spain, 40,000; Russia, 58,000; Poland, 15,000; Sweden and Norway, 1500; Denmark and Holland, 5000; Persia, 15,000; Transcaucasia, 3000. The rest is mere guesswork. For Africa, America and Australia the numbers are estimated between 135,000 and 166,000. The estimate given by Miklosich (1878) of 700,000 fairly agrees with the above statistics. No statistics are forthcoming for the number in the British Isles. Some estimate their number at 12,000.

The Gipsies are known principally by two names, which have been modified by the nations with whom they came in contact, but which can easily be traced to either the one or the other of these two distinct stems. The one group, embracing the majority of Gipsies in Europe, the compact masses living in the Balkan Peninsula, Rumania and Transylvania and extending also as far as Germany and Italy, are known by the name Atzigan or Atsigan, which becomes in time Tshingian (Turkey and Greece), Tsigan (Bulgarian, Servian, Rumanian), Czigány (Hungarian), Zigeuner (Germany), Zingari (Italian), and it is not unlikely that the English word Tinker or Tinkler (the latter no doubt due to a popular etymology connecting the gaudy gipsy with the tinkling coins or the metal wares which he carried on his back as a smith and tinker) may be a local transformation of the German Zigeuner. The second name, partly known in the East, where the word, however, is used as an expression of contempt, whilst Zigan is not felt by the gipsies as an insult, is Egyptian; in England, Gipsy; in some German documents of the 16th century Aegypter; Spanish Gitano; modern Greek Gyphtos. They are also known by the parallel expressions Faraon (Rumanian) and Phárao Nephka (Hungarian) or Pharaoh’s people, which are only variations connected with the Egyptian origin. In France they are known as Bohémiens, a word the importance of which will appear later. To the same category belong other names bestowed upon them, such as Walachi, Saraceni, Agareni, Nubiani, &c. They were also known by the name of Tartars, given to them in Germany, or as “Heathen,” Heydens. All these latter must be considered as nicknames without thereby denoting their probable origin. The same may have now been the ease with the first name with which they appear in history, Atzigan. Much ingenuity has been displayed in attempts to explain the name, for it was felt that a true explanation might help to settle the question of their origin and the date of their arrival in Europe. Here again two extreme theories have been propounded, the one supported by Bataillard, who connected them with the Sigynnoi of Herodotus and identified them with the Komodromoi of the later Byzantine writers, known already in the 6th century. Others bring them to Europe as late as the 14th century; and the name has also been explained by de Goeje from the Persian Chang, a kind of harp or zither, or the Persian Zang, black, swarthy. Rienzi (1832) and Trumpp (1872) have connected the name with the Changars of North-East India, but all have omitted to notice that the real form was Atzigan or (more correct) Atzingan and not Tsigan. The best explanation remains that suggested by Miklosich, who derives the word from the Athinganoi, a name originally belonging to a peculiar heretical sect living in Asia Minor near Phrygia and Lycaonia, known also as the Melki-Zedekites. The members of this sect observed very strict rules of purity, as they were afraid to be defiled by the touch of other people whom they considered unclean. They therefore acquired the name of Athinganoi (i.e. “Touch-me-nots”).

Miklosich has collected seven passages where the Byzantine historians of the 9th century describe the Athinganoi as soothsayers, magicians and serpent-charmers. From these descriptions nothing definite can be proved as to the identity of the Athinganoi with the Gipsies, or the reason why this name was given to soothsayers, charmers, &c. But the inner history of the Byzantine empire of that period may easily give a clue to it and explain how it came about that such a nickname was given to a new sect or to a new race which suddenly appeared in the Greek Empire at that period. In the history of the Church we find them mentioned in one breath with the Paulicians and other heretical sects which were transplanted in their tens of thousands from Asia Minor to the Greek empire and settled especially in Rumelia, near Adrianople and Philippopolis. The Greeks called these heretical sects by all kinds of names, derived from ancient Church traditions, and gave to each sect such names as first struck them, on the scantiest of imaginary similarities. One sect was called Paulician, another Melki-Zedekite; so also these were called Athinganoi, probably being considered the descendants of the outcast Samer, who, according to ancient tradition, was a goldsmith and the maker of the Golden Calf in the desert. For this sin Samer was banished and compelled to live apart from human beings and even to avoid their touch (Athinganos: “Touch-me-not”). Travelling from East to West these heretical sects obtained different names in different countries, in accordance with the local traditions or to imaginary origins. The Bogomils and Patarenes became Bulgarians in France, and so the gypsies Bohémiens, a name which was also connected with the heretical sect of the Bohemian brothers (Böhmische Brüder). Curiously enough the Kutzo-Vlachs living in Macedonia (q.v.) and Rumelia are also known by the nickname Tsintsari, a word that has not yet been explained. Very likely it stands in close connexion with Zingari, the name having been transferred from one people to the other without the justification of any common ethnical origin, except that the Kutzo-Vlachs, like the Zingari, differed from their Greek neighbours in race, as in language, habits and customs; while they probably followed similar pursuits to those of the Zingari, as smiths, &c. As to the other name, Egyptians, this is derived from a peculiar tale which the gipsies spread when appearing in the west of Europe. They alleged that they had come from a country of their own called Little Egypt, either a confusion between Little Armenia and Egypt or the Peloponnesus.

Attention may be drawn to a remarkable passage in the Syriac version of the apocryphal Book of Adam, known as the Cave of Treasures and compiled probably in the 6th century: “And of the seed of Canaan were as I said the Aegyptians; and, lo, they were scattered all over the earth and served as slaves of slaves” (ed. Bezold, German translation, p. 25). No reference to such a scattering and serfdom of the Egyptians is mentioned anywhere else. This must have been a legend, current in Asia Minor, and hence probably transferred to the swarthy Gipsies.

A new explanation may now be ventured upon as to the name which the Gipsies of Europe give to themselves, which, it must be emphasized, is not known to the Gipsies outside of Europe. Only those who starting from the ancient Byzantine empire have travelled westwards and spread over Europe, America and Australia call themselves by the name of Rom, the woman being Romni and a stranger Gaži. Many etymologies have been suggested for the word Rom. Paspati derived it from the word Droma (Indian), and Miklosich had identified it with Ḍoma or Ḍomba, a “low caste musician,” rather an extraordinary name for a nation to call itself by. Having no home and no country of their own and no political traditions and no literature, they would naturally try to identify themselves with the people in whose midst they lived, and would call themselves by the same name as other inhabitants of the Greek empire, known also as the Empire of New Rom, or of the Romaioi, Romeliots, Romanoi, as the Byzantines used to call themselves before they assumed the prouder name of Hellenes. The Gipsies would therefore call themselves also Rom, a much more natural name, more flattering to their vanity, and geographically and politically more correct than if they called themselves “low caste musicians.” This Greek origin of the name would explain why it is limited to the European Gipsies, and why it is not found among that stock of Gipsies which has migrated from Asia Minor southwards and taken a different route to reach Egypt and North Africa.

Appearance in Europe.—Leaving aside the doubtful passages in the Byzantine writers where the Athinganoi are mentioned, the first appearance of Gipsies in Europe cannot be traced positively further back than the beginning of the 14th century. Some have hitherto believed that a passage in what was erroneously called the Rhymed Version of Genesis of Vienna, but which turns out to be the work of a writer before the year 1122, and found only in the Klagenfurt manuscript (edited by Ditmar, 1862), referred to the Gipsies. It runs as follows: Gen. xiii. 15—“Hagar had a son from whom were born the Chaltsmide. When Hagar had that child, she named it Ismael, from whom the Ismaelites descend who journey through the land, and we call them Chaltsmide, may evil befall them! They sell only things with blemishes, and for whatever they sell they always ask more than its real value. They cheat the people to whom they sell. They have no home, no country, they are satisfied to live in tents, they wander over the country, they deceive the people, they cheat men but rob no one noisily.”

This reference to the Chaltsmide (not goldsmiths, but very likely ironworkers, smiths) has wrongly been applied to the Gipsies. For it is important to note that at least three centuries before historical evidence proves the immigration of the genuine Gipsy, there had been wayfaring smiths, travelling from country to country, and practically paving the way for their successors, the Gipsies, who not only took up their crafts but who probably have also assimilated a good proportion of these vagrants of the west of Europe. The name given to the former, who probably were Oriental or Greek smiths and pedlars, was then transferred to the new-comers. The Komodromoi mentioned by Theophanes (758-818), who speaks under the date 554 of one hailing from Italy, and by other Byzantine writers, are no doubt the same as the Chaltsmide of the German writer of the 12th century translated by Ducange as Chaudroneurs. We are on surer ground in the 14th century. Hopf has proved the existence of Gipsies in Corfu before 1326. Before 1346 the empress Catherine de Valois granted to the governor of Corfu authority to reduce to vassalage certain vagrants who came from the mainland; and in 1386, under the Venetians, they formed the Feudum Acindanorum, which lasted for many centuries. About 1378 the Venetian governor of Nauplia confirmed to the “Acingani” of that colony the privileges granted by his predecessor to their leader John. It is even possible to identify the people described by Friar Simon in his Itinerarium, who, speaking of his stay in Crete in 1322, says: “We saw there a people outside the city who declare themselves to be of the race of Ham and who worship according to the Greek rite. They wander like a cursed people from place to place, not stopping at all or rarely in one place longer than thirty days; they live in tents like the Arabs, a little oblong black tent.” But their name is not mentioned, and although the similarity is great between these “children of Ham” and the Gipsies, the identification has only the value of an hypothesis. By the end of the 15th century they must have been settled for a sufficiently long time in the Balkan Peninsula and the countries north of the Danube, such as Transylvania and Walachia, to have been reduced to the same state of serfdom as they evidently occupied in Corfu in the second half of the 14th century. The voivode Mircea I. of Walachia confirms the grant made by his uncle Vladislav Voivode to the monastery of St Anthony of Voditsa as to forty families of “Atsigane,” for whom no taxes should be paid to the prince. They were considered crown property. The same gift is renewed in the year 1424 by the voivode Dan, who repeats the very same words (i Acigăne, m, čeliudi. da su slobodni ot vstkih rabot i dankov) (Hăjdău, Arhiva, i. 20). At that time there must already have been in Walachia settled Gipsies treated as serfs, and migrating Gipsies plying their trade as smiths, musicians, dancers, soothsayers, horse-dealers, &c., for we find the voivode Alexander of Moldavia granting these Gipsies in the year 1478 “freedom of air and soil to wander about and free fire and iron for their smithy.” But a certain portion, probably the largest, became serfs, who could be sold, exchanged, bartered and inherited. It may be mentioned here that in the 17th century a family when sold fetched forty Hungarian florins, and in the 18th century the price was sometimes as high as 700 Rumanian piastres, about £8, 10s. As late as 1845 an auction of 200 families of Gipsies took place in Bucharest, where they were sold in batches of no less than 5 families and offered at a “ducat” cheaper per head than elsewhere. The Gipsies followed at least four distinct pursuits in Rumania and Transylvania, where they lived in large masses. A goodly proportion of them were tied to the soil; in consequence their position was different from that of the Gipsies who had started westwards and who are nowhere found to have obtained a permanent abode for any length of time, or to have been treated, except for a very short period, with any consideration of humanity.

Their appearance in the West is first noted by chroniclers early in the 15th century. In 1414 they are said to have already arrived in Hesse. This date is contested, but for 1417 the reports are unanimous of their appearance in Germany. Some count their number to have been as high as 1400, which of course is exaggeration. In 1418 they reached Hamburg, 1419 Augsburg, 1428 Switzerland. In 1427 they had already entered France (Provence). A troupe is said to have reached Bologna in 1422, whence they are said to have gone to Rome, on a pilgrimage alleged to have been undertaken for some act of apostasy. After this first immigration a second and larger one seems to have followed in its wake, led by Zumbel. The Gipsies spread over Germany, Italy and France between the years 1438 and 1512. About 1500 they must have reached England. On the 5th of July 1505 James IV. of Scotland gave to “Antonius Gaginae,” count of Little Egypt, letters of recommendation to the king of Denmark; and special privileges were granted by James V. on the 15th of February 1540 to “oure louit johnne Faw Lord and Erle of Litill Egypt,” to whose son and successor he granted authority to hang and punish all Egyptians within the realm (May 26, 1540).

It is interesting to hear what the first writers who witnessed their appearance have to tell us; for ever since the Gipsies have remained the same. Albert Krantzius (Krantz), in his Saxonia (xi. 2), was the first to give a full description, which was afterwards repeated by Munster in his Cosmographia (iii. 5). He says that in the year 1417 there appeared for the first time in Germany a people uncouth, black, dirty, barbarous, called in Italian “Ciani,” who indulge specially in thieving and cheating. They had among them a count and a few knights well dressed, others followed afoot. The women and children travelled in carts. They also carried with them letters of safe-conduct from the emperor Sigismund and other princes, and they professed that they were engaged on a pilgrimage of expiation for some act of apostasy.

The guilt of the Gipsies varies in the different versions of the story, but all agree that the Gipsies asserted that they came from their own country called “Litill Egypt,” and they had to go to Rome, to obtain pardon for that alleged sin of their forefathers. According to one account it was because they had not shown mercy to Joseph and Mary when they had sought refuge in Egypt from the persecution of Herod (Basel Chronicle). According to another, because they had forsaken the Christian faith for a while (Rhaetia, 1656), &c. But these were fables, no doubt connected with the legend of Cartaphylus or the Wandering Jew.

Krantz’s narrative continues as follows: This people have no country and travel through the land. They live like dogs and have no religion although they allow themselves to be baptized in the Christian faith. They live without care and gather unto themselves also other vagrants, men and women. Their old women practise fortune-telling, and whilst they are telling men of their future they pick their pockets. Thus far Krantz. It is curious that he should use the name by which these people were called in Italy, “Ciani.” Similarly Crusius, the author of the Annales Suevici, knows their Italian name Zigani and the French Bohémiens. Not one of these oldest writers mentions them as coppersmiths or farriers or musicians. The immunity which they enjoyed during their first appearance in western Europe is due to the letter of safe-conduct of the emperor. As it is of extreme importance for the history of civilization as well as the history of the Gipsies, it may find a place here. It is taken from the compilation of Felix Oefelius, Rerum Boicarum scriptores (Augsburg, 1763), ii. 15, who reproduces the “Diarium sexennale” of “Andreas Presbyter,” the contemporary of the first appearance of the Gipsies in Germany.

“Sigismundus Dei gratia Romanorum Rex semper Augustus, ac Hungariae, Bohemiae, Dalmatiae, Croatiae, &c. Rex Fidelibus nostris universis Nobilibus, Militibus, Castellanis, Officialibus, Tributariis, civitatibus liberis, opidis et eorum iudicibus in Regno et sub domino nostro constitutis ex existentibus salutem cum dilectione. Fidèles nostri adierunt in praesentiam personaliter Ladislaus Wayuoda Ciganorum cum aliis ad ipsum spectantibus, nobis humilimas porrexerunt supplicationes, huc in sepus in nostra praesentia supplicationum precum cum instantiâ, ut ipsis gratiâ nostra uberiori providere dignaremur. Unde nos illorum supplicatione illecti eisdem hanc libertatem duximus concedendam, qua re quandocunque idem Ladislaus Wayuoda et sua gens ad dicta nostra dominia videlicet civitates vel oppida pervenerint, ex tunc vestris fidelitatibus praesentibus firmiter committimus et mandamus ut eosdem Ladislaum Wayuodam et Ciganos sibi subiectos omni sine impedimento ac perturbatione aliquali fovere ac conservare debeatis, immo ab omnibus impetitionibus seu offensionibus tueri velitis: Si autem inter ipsos aliqua Zizania seu perturbatio evenerit ex parte, quorumcunque ex tunc non vos nec aliquis alter vestrum, sed idem Ladislaus Wayuoda iudicandi et liberandi habeat facultatem. Praesentes autem post earum lecturam semper reddi iubemus praesentanti.

“Datum in Sepus Dominica die ante festum St Georgii Martyris Anno Domini MCCCCXXIII., Regnorum nostrorum anno Hungar. XXXVI., Romanorum vero XII., Bohemiae tertio.”

Freely translated this reads: “We Sigismund by the grace of God emperor of Rome, king of Hungary, Bohemia, &c. unto all true and loyal subjects, noble soldiers, commanders, castellans, open districts, free towns and their judges in our kingdom established and under our sovereignty, kind greetings. Our faithful voivode of the Tsigani with others belonging to him has humbly requested us that we might graciously grant them our abundant favour. We grant them their supplication, we have vouchsafed unto them this liberty. Whenever therefore this voivode Ladislaus and his people should come to any part of our realm in any town, village or place, we commit them by these presents, strongly to your loyalty and we command you to protect in every way the same voivode Ladislaus and the Tsigani his subjects without hindrance, and you should show kindness unto them and you should protect them from every trouble and persecution. But should any trouble or discord happen among them from whichever side it may be, then none of you nor anyone else belonging to you should interfere, but this voivode Ladislaus alone should have the right of punishing and pardoning. And we moreover command you to return these presents always after having read them. Given in our court on Sunday the day before the Feast of St George in the year of our Lord 1423. The 36th year of our kingdom of Hungary, the 12th of our being emperor of Rome and the 3rd of our being king of Bohemia.”

There is no reason to doubt the authenticity of this document, which is in no way remarkable considering that at that time the Gipsies must have formed a very considerable portion of the inhabitants of Hungary, whose king Sigismund was. They may have presented the emperor’s grant of favours to Alexander prince of Moldavia in 1472, and obtained from him safe-conduct and protection, as mentioned above.

No one has yet attempted to explain the reason why the Gipsies should have started in the 14th and especially in the first half of the 15th century on their march westwards. But if, as has been assumed above, the Gipsies had lived for some length of time in Rumelia, and afterwards spread thence across the Danube and the plains of Transylvania, the incursion of the Turks into Europe, their successive occupation of those very provinces, the overthrow of the Servian and Bulgarian kingdoms and the dislocation of the native population, would account to a remarkable degree for the movement of the Gipsies: and this movement increases in volume with the greater successes of the Turks and with the peopling of the country by immigrants from Asia Minor. The first to be driven from their homes would no doubt be the nomadic element, which felt itself ill at ease in its new surroundings, and found it more profitable first to settle in larger numbers in Walachia and Transylvania and thence to spread to the western countries of Europe. But their immunity from persecution did not last long.

Later History.—Less than fifty years from the time that they emerge out of Hungary, or even from the date of the Charter of the emperor Sigismund, they found themselves exposed to the fury and the prejudices of the people whose good faith they had abused, whose purses they had lightened, whose barns they had emptied, and on whose credulity they had lived with ease and comfort. Their inborn tendency to roaming made them the terror of the peasantry and the despair of every legislator who tried to settle them on the land. Their foreign appearance, their unknown tongue and their unscrupulous habits forced the legislators of many countries to class them with rogues and vagabonds, to declare them outlaws and felons and to treat them with extreme severity. More than one judicial murder has been committed against them. In some places they were suspected as Turkish spies and treated accordingly, and the murderer of a Gipsy was often regarded as innocent of any crime.

Weissenbruch describes the wholesale murder of a group of Gipsies, of whom five men were broken on the wheel, nine perished on the gallows, and three men and eight women were decapitated. This took place on the 14th and 15th of November 1726. Acts and edicts were issued in many countries from the end of the 15th century onwards sentencing the “Egyptians” to exile under pain of death. Nor was this an empty threat. In Edinburgh four “Faas” were hanged in 1611 “for abyding within the kingdome, they being Egiptienis,” and in 1636 at Haddington the Egyptians were ordered “the men to be hangied and the weomen to be drowned, and suche of the weomen as hes children to be scourgit throw the burg and burnt in the cheeks.” The burning on the cheek or on the back was a common penalty. In 1692 four Estremadura Gipsies caught by the Inquisition were charged with cannibalism and made to own that they had eaten a friar, a pilgrim and even a woman of their own tribe, for which they suffered the penalty of death. And as late as 1782, 45 Hungarian Gipsies were charged with a similar monstrous crime, and when the supposed victims of a supposed murder could not be found on the spot indicated by the Gipsies, they owned under torture and said on the rack, “We ate them.” Of course they were forthwith beheaded or hanged. The emperor Joseph II., who was also the author of one of the first edicts in favour of the Gipsies, and who abolished serfdom throughout the Empire, ordered an inquiry into the incident; it was then discovered that no murder had been committed, except that of the victims of this monstrous accusation.

The history of the legal status of the Gipsies, of their treatment in various countries and of the penalties and inflictions to which they have been subjected, would form a remarkable chapter in the history of modern civilization. The materials are slowly accumulating, and it is interesting to note as one of the latest instances, that not further back than the year 1907 a “drive” was undertaken in Germany against the Gipsies, which fact may account for the appearance of some German Gipsies in England in that year, and that in 1904 the Prussian Landtag adopted unanimously a proposition to examine anew the question of granting peddling licences to German Gipsies; that on the 17th of February 1906 the Prussian minister issued special instructions to combat the Gipsy nuisance; and that in various parts of Germany and Austria a special register is kept for the tracing of the genealogy of vagrant and sedentary Gipsy families.

Different has been the history of the Gipsies in what originally formed the Turkish empire of Europe, notably in Rumania, i.e. Walachia and Moldavia, and a careful search in the archives of Rumania would offer rich materials for the history of the Gipsies in a country where they enjoyed exceptional treatment almost from the beginning of their settlement. They were divided mainly into two classes, (1) Robi or Serfs, who were settled on the land and deprived of all individual liberty, being the property of the nobles and of churches or monastic establishments, and (2) the Nomadic vagrants. They were subdivided into four classes according to their occupation, such as the Lingurari (woodcarvers; lit. “spoonmakers”), Caldarari (tinkers, coppersmiths and ironworkers), Ursari (lit. “bear drivers”) and Rudari (miners), also called Aurari (gold-washers), who used formerly to wash the gold out of the auriferous river-sands of Walachia. A separate and smaller class consisted of the Gipsy Lăeshi or Vătrashi (settled on a homestead or “having a fireplace” of their own). Each shatra or Gipsy community was placed under the authority of a judge or leader, known in Rumania as jude, in Hungary as aga; these officials were subordinate to the bulubasha or voivod, who was himself under the direct control of the yuzbasha (or governor appointed by the prince from among his nobles). The yuzbasha was responsible for the regular income to be derived from the vagrant Gipsies, who were considered and treated as the prince’s property. These voivodi or yuzbashi who were not Gipsies by origin often treated the Gipsies with great tyranny. In Hungary down to 1648 they belonged to the aristocracy. The last Polish Krolestvo cyganskie or Gipsy king died in 1790. The Robi could be bought and sold, freely exchanged and inherited, and were treated as the negroes in America down to 1856, when their final freedom in Moldavia was proclaimed. In Hungary and in Transylvania the abolition of servitude in 1781-1782 carried with it the freedom of the Gipsies. In the 18th and 19th centuries many attempts were made to settle and to educate the roaming Gipsies; in Austria this was undertaken by the empress Maria Theresa and the emperor Francis II. (1761-1783), in Spain by Charles III. (1788). In Poland (1791) the attempt succeeded. In England (1827) and in Germany (1830) societies were formed for the reclamation of the Gipsies, but nothing was accomplished in either case. In other countries, however, definite progress was made. Since 1866 the Gipsies have become Rumanian citizens, and the latest official statistics no longer distinguish between the Rumanians and the Gipsies, who are becoming thoroughly assimilated, forgetting their language, and being slowly absorbed by the native population. In Bulgaria the Gipsies were declared citizens, enjoying equal political rights in accordance with the treaty of Berlin in 1878, but through an arbitrary interpretation they were deprived of that right, and on the 6th of January 1906 the first Gipsy Congress was held in Sofia, for the purpose of claiming political rights for the Turkish Gipsies or Gopti as they call themselves. Ramadan Alief, the tzari-bashi (i.e. the head of the Gipsies in Sofia), addressed the Gipsies assembled; they decided to protest and subsequently sent a petition to the Sobranye, demanding the recognition of their political rights. A curious reawakening, and an interesting chapter in the history of this peculiar race.