SAN SEPOLCRO
451
SAN SEPOLCRO
latter, Izalco, popularly called the "Lighthouse of
Salvador" from its almost continual eruptions (three
to each hour), broke out in a small plain on 23 Febru-
ary, 1770, and has now a cone over 6000 feet high.
Earthquakes are frequent and San Salvador has often
suffered, especially on 16 April, 1854, when the entire
city was levelled in ten seconds. Salvador is rich in
minerals, gold, silver, copper, mercury, and coal being
mined. The chief imports, which in 1909 had a value
of $4,176,931 (gold), are machinery, woollens, cottons,
drugs, hardware; the chief exports besides minerals
are indigo, sugar, coffee, and Peruvian balsam, valued
at $16,963,000 (silver).
Railroads connect the capital with Santa Tecla and the port of Acajutla. Education is free and compulsory but very backward. There are about 600 primary schools, with 30,000 enrolled pupils, 20 high schools (3 normal, and 3 technical), and a uni- versity at San Salvador with faculties of engineering, law, medicine, pharmacy, and dentistry. The Na- tional Library (founded 1867) has 20,000 volumes; a National Museum was established in 1903. Salvador
form of his name is the traditional one, Piero dblla
Francesca, which is better authenticated in con-
temporary documents than what in late research had
been supposed to be the more correct form, Piero
DEI Franceschi (Gronau, "Repertorium fiir Kunst-
wissenschaft", xxiii, 392-4). He was the son of a
notary, Ser Benedetto, a member of an influential fam-
ily long identified with the government of the town —
the Franceschi. His earliest artistic training is unknown,
but he was active at Perugia in 1438, probably as an
assistant to Domenico Veneziano, and he was certainly
employed in the same capacity in the Church of
Sant' Egidio, Florence, in 1439-40. To Domenico
and probably also to Paolo Uccello, Florentine Realists
who did much for the technical side of painting, we
may ascribe the formative influence in his art. Piero
first appears as an independent master in 1445, when
he painted a still surviving altar-piece of many panels
for the Brotherhood of the Misericordia in his native
town. He is said to have laboured with Domenico
at Loreto, and he was certainly at Rimini in 1451,
when he painted a remarkable fresco in the chapel of
Portrait of Battist.v Sforz.i
Uffizi Gallery, Florence
Piero da San Skpolcro
Virgin and Child
Villamarina Collection, Koine
was invaded by Pedro Alvarado in 1524, emancipated
from Spain in 1821. and made part of the Fcsderation
of Central America in 1824. In 1839 it became free.
Its Constitution finally adopted in 1886 provides for a
president elected for four years, with a right to nomi-
nate four secretaries of State, and a National Assembly
of 70 members, 42 of whom are landholders, all elected
by universal male suffrage. Catholici.sm is the state
religion, but the civil authorities are hostile and have
confiscated the sources of church revenue. San Sal-
vador on the Rio Acelhuate in the valley of Las Ha-
macas was founded in 1528, but rebuilt in 1539, about
twenty miles south of its first site; the diocese, erected
on 28 September, 1842, is suffragan of Santiago of
Guatemala, and contains .589 churches and chapels,
190 secular and 45 regular clergy, 70 nuns, 89 parishes,
3 colleges for boys and 3 for girls, and a Catholic popu-
lation of over 1,000,000; the present bishop, who suc-
ceeded Mgr. Carcamo, is Mgr. Antonio Adolfo P6rez
y Aguilar, born at San Salvador, 20 March, 1839, and
appointed on 13 January, 1888.
Salvador: Bulletin nf the Bureau of American Republics (Washington, 1892); Reyes, Nociones de historia del Salvador (San Salvador, 1S8G); Pector, Notice sur le Salvador (Paris, 1889); Gon.sAlez, Datos sobre la republica de El Salvador (San Salvador, 1901); Keane, Central America, II (London, 1901),
183-94. A. A. MacErlean.
San Sepolcro. See Borgo San-Sepolcro, Dio- cese OF.
San Sepolcro, Piero da, painter, b. at Borgo San- Sepolcro, about 1420; d. there, 1492. The most usual
POKTKAIT OF FkDICUIGO DA MaLATESTA
Uffizi Gallery, Floience
San Francesco, representing Sigismondo Malatesta, Lord of Rimini, venerating his patron saint, Sigismund. After this he was active at Ferrara and Bologna, and, according to Vasari, he also decorated a room of the Vatican for Pope Nicholas V. In 1454 he was again at Borgo San-Sepolcro, wh(ire in 1460 he painted a fresco of St. Louis of Toulouse, now preserved in the town hall. It was probably between this date and 1466 that he painted his masterpiece, the frescoes in the choir of San Francesco at Arezzo, which may, however, have been begun earlier. The subject is the "Story of the True Cross", involving incidents beginning with Adam and including the story of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Constantine and St. llelcna, Ileraclius and Chosroes. These frescoes rank with those by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel as epoch-making in the decorative art of the fifteenth century.
In the spring of 1469 Piero was at Urbino, lodging in the house of Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, in which city a large part of his later activity occurred. From this period probably dates the remarkable diptych of the Uffizi, containing the portraits of the Duke (then Count) of Urbino, the ideal prince of the Renaissance, and the mild and refined image of his wife, Battista Sforza, with allegorical triumphs of these rulers on the reverse sides. About this tiiiic he also painted the well-known "Madonna" with saints and angels, vencrat(Hl by the Duke of Urbino, now in the Brera, Milan; and the "Flagellation of Christ", a
