Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/656

644 CLAUDIA QUTNTA CLAUDIUS Italy, spent some time in Venice, and returned to France by the way of Tyrol and Germany. He was soon employed by the duke of Lorraine, who invited him to his house and made him very advantageous offers. After a short time he returned to Italy, and established himself in Kome, where he found ample employment. One of his earliest patrons was Cardinal Benti- voglio, who presented him to Pope Urban VIII., and for whom he painted a number of beauti- ful works. He was now only about 30 years of age, but had so thoroughly acquired his art that he was already recognized as one of the great masters. For more than 40 years after- ward Claude continued to reside in Italy, and painted until very old. He was never married. A monument was dedicated to him in 1840 in the French church at Rome, and a statue was erected to his memory at Epinal. Claude's great success caused him to be imitated by a host of painters, whereby a vast number of pictures were palmed upon collectors as his works. In order to detect these spurious pro- ductions, and identify his own, he made draw- ings of such as he was commissioned to paint, which he inscribed with the names of the pur- chasers. At his death he left six volumes of these drawings, which he called Libridi veritd. One set containing 200 sketches is in possession of the duke of Devonshire ; they were engraved by Earlom, and published by Boydell under the title of Liber Veritatia. Another is in the British museum. Rome and its environs, its Tiber and Campagna, its stupendous ruins and classic memories, furnished Claude with inex- haustible subjects for his pencil. He would spend whole days in the open air studying na- ture, and noting every change in the skies, or the lights and shadows of the landscape. His skies are aerial and full of brilliant effect, and there is a soft atmospheric haze over his scenes. One of his most celebrated landscapes repre- sents a little grove of the Villa Madama, near Rome, for which Pope Clement XI. offered as much gold coin a would be required to cover the surface of the painting. His favorite periods of day were at sunrise and sunset, when ob- jects are robed in the most delicate coloring. His figures, however, are inferior, and he fre- quently engaged other artists to pencil them for him. England is especially rich in the works of Claude Lorraine ; the national gallery of London contains a number of them r two of which, the "St. Ursula" and the "Embarka- tion of the Queen of Sheba," he probably never surpassed. Four of his finest paintings were taken by Napoleon from the gallery of Cassel to Paris, where they adorned Malmaison. In 1814 the czar Alexander acquired them, and they are now in St. Petersburg. CLAUDIA QUINTA, a Roman matron of legen- dary fame. Being accused of incontinency, she heard the soothsayers declare that only a virtuous woman could move the vessel convey- ing the image of Cybele to Rome, which had grounded on a sand bank at the mouth of the Tiber (206 B. C.). Coming forward from among the matrons who had gone to Ostia to receive the image, and calling on Cybele to vindicate her innocence, she seized the rope attached to the vessel, which immediately moved from its sandy bed and floated. Her statue was erected in the vestibule of the temple of Cybele. CLAUDIAN i < litudius Clandianns), an epic poet, born at Alexandria about 865, flourished in the reigns of Theodosius the Great and his two sons, Honorius and Arcadius. His education was Greek, but when grown up to manhood he went to Rome, and attached himself to Stilicho, the virtual ruler of the West on the division of the empire, with whom he became a great favorite, arriving at high honors ; the great influence he possessed is proved by a statue erected in his honor discovered at Rome in the 15th century. He returned late in life to Egypt, and probably died there. His poems are very numerous, epics, lyrics, and panegyrics. Some of his epics are the De Kajjtu Proserpina, in three cantos, not quite complete ; its great defect consists in making the subject a historical event ; the Qi- gantomachia, a fragment extending to 128 lines only; De Hello Gildonico, describing the vic- tories of Honorius ; and De JJeHo Oetico or Pollentino, in which is described the victory of Stilicho over Alaric the Visigoth, near Pol- Icut i:i. in 403. Claudian addressed many pan- egyrics to the distinguished men of his age, as De Laudilus Stilichonis, in three books, De Bella Getieo making the fourth ; three books upon the third, fourth, and sixth consulships of Honorius ; and In Itufiniim. The best edition of his works is that of the younger Burmann (Amsterdam, 1760). The first volume of a good edition by KOnig appeared in Gottingen in 1808, and a metrical English translation of his whole works in London in 1817. < I. U HI I s, the name of two Roman emperors. I. Tiberias Clandins Drnsus Nero Gcrmanicns, the fourth emperor, born at Lugdunum (Lyons), Aug. 1, 10 B. C., died A. D. 54. He was the son of Drusus and Antonia, and the grandson of Tiberius Claudius Nero and Livia, who subse- quently became the wife of Augustus. In his youth he was of delicate constitution and feeble intellect, neglected and despised by his rel- atives, and left to the care of pedagogues, women, and slaves. He possessed, however, great industry, and became a tolerable scholar. He was 50 years old and totally inexperienced in political affairs when the murder of Caligula, A. D. 41, called him to the throne. "When the timid student heard of Caligula's fate, he hid himself in a remote apartment of the palace, fearing to be the next victim. In this position he was found by a common soldier, who raised him from the ground and saluted him as em- peror. Other soldiers now entered the palace and joined their comrade, and presently the despised recluse was borne to the pra-toi-ian camp, and proclaimed by the legionaries, who immediately took the oath of allegiance to