Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 3.djvu/464

This page needs to be proofread.

CASTELLAMMARE


408


CASTELLI


etc. From that time he went by the name of Andrea degli Impiccati". In 1454 Pope Nicholas V commissioned him to decorate the apartments of the Vatican. Vasari recounts that Andrea, having learned the secret of oil-painting from Domenico Veneziano, and wishing to remain the sole master of the art, assassinated his comrade. It is known, however, that Domenico survived him four years. Castagno is one of the artists who, with Paolo Uccello (b. 1497) and Filippo Lippi (b. 1406), con- tributed most actively to the Masaccio revolution in art. His works, however, show the influence of the frescoes of the Brancacci's chapel. He was greatly influenced also by the work of the sculptor Donatello. He has neither the passion of the latter, nor the moral grandeur of Masaccio, nor the elegance of Lippi. But in his own domain, which is the per- fecting of plastic and of the resources of drawing, no one has made more progress than he. His paint- ings have been scattered and cannot be studied any- where but in Florence. The most celebrated of his works is the life-like and strongly-executed eques- trian portrait of Niecolo da Tolentino, in the Cathe- dral of Florence, which forms the pendant to that of John Hawkwood by Uccello (1436). Most remarkable is the " Last Supper" , which hangs in the refectory of the old convent of S. Apollonia. The figures, almost colossal, have a power of anatomy, an individuality, a savage life which forces one to forget the absence of all religious emotion. Such charac- teristics are also found in the frescoes of the Villa Carducci, which are now at the National Museum. They represent Thomyris, Esther, and the Cumaean Sibyl, the poets Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, statesmen such as Acciaiuoli, Farinata degli Uberti, and Pippo Spano. These last, by the energy of their attitude, the hang of their draperies, and their heroic aspect, produce an impression of grandeur and so- lemnity which is found nowhere in the Florentine school of the fourteenth century outside of the works of Masaccio and Signorelli.

Vasari, Le Vile de' Pittori; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, His- tory of Painting in ltohi; Mintz, La renaissance, 1, 623; Beren- son, The Florentine Painters.

Louis Gillet.

Castellammare di Stabia (Castri Maris, Stable), Diocese of (Stabiensis). — The seat of the diocese is an industrial city, situated on the Bay of Naples, on a slope of Monte Gauro, and famous for its health- giving mineral springs. It is also a naval station. The city was built near the ruins of the ancient Stabicc, bur- ied in a. d. 79 under the ashes and scoria of Vesuvius. The history of this city is more or less that of Naples. It has been a fortified town since the time of the House of Anjou, and it is supposed that Christianity was introduced there at an early period. Previous to Ursus, present at the Roman synod under Pope Symmachus, in 499, no register was kept of the bishops of this city. Among its noteworthy bishops were: Lubentius, present in Rome in 649; St. Castellus (827); Palmerio (1196), champion of ecclesiastical rights against Frederick II; Giovanni Fonseca (1537), a famous theologian :it the Council of Trent; Ludovico Gravina (1581) and C. Vittorino Maso (1599), learned theologians and canonists; also the accomplished orator, Clemente del Pezzo (1651). In 1818 Pius VII united with this see Torre Patria, the ancient Liter num. The diocese has a population of 70,400, with 26 parishes, 90 churches and chapels, 220 secular and 30 regular priests, 4 religious houses of men and 1 1 of women.

Cappelletti, Le chieee li'Itaha, XIX; Ann. eccl. (Rome, 1907), 1377.

U. Benigni. Castellana, Andrea de. See Scalimoli. Oastellaneta (Castania), Diocese of (Castel- lanetensis), suffragan of Taranto. Castellan. ita i-


a city of the province of Lecce, in Southern Italy, about twenty-four miles from Taranto (Tarentum). Nothing is known of this city previous to 1080, when it was taken by Robert, Duke of Tarentum, who expelled its Byzantine inhabitants, at which time, probably, the episcopal see was created ; in the same year Tarentum was made a metropolitan see. A Bishop of Castellaneta, Joannes, is first mentioned in 1088. In 1818 the Diocese of Mottola was united with the Diocese of Castellaneta. There is a record of an otherwise unknown Bishop of Mottola who died in 1040; his successor was a certain Liberius. The diocese has a population of 38,600, with 6 parishes, 41 churches and chapels, 53 secular and 16 regular priests, 2 religious houses of men and 6 of women.

Cappelletti, Le chiese d'ltalia (Venice, 1S44I, XXI. 141; Ann. eccl. (Rome, 1907), 378.

U. Benigni.

Castellanos, Juan de, b. in Spain in the first half of the sixteenth century; date of death unknown. He came to America previous to 1545 as a cavalry soldier, and acquired some means on the Pearl Coast. Abandoning t lie military profession he became a secular priest at Cartagena and, declining the dig- nities of canon and treasurer, went as curate to Tunja on the Colombian table-land. There he com- posed his epic poem, "Elegias de Varones ilustres de Indias", the first part of which appeared at Madrid in 1588, and the first three parts in 1837. The remainder of the work is still in manuscript. The Lenox Branch of the New York Public Library possesses a complete and handsome copy. The verse is better than that of Ercilla's "Araucana"; it treats succes- sively of the deeds of the principal Spaniards who distinguished themselves in America, beginning with Columbus, and is an invaluable source for the colonial history of northern South America, including many details of ethnography and ethnology.

Castellanos enjoyed the advantage of being among the earliest "conquerors", and was acquainted with nearly every prominent leader of the time. He relies to some extent upon Oviedo for many details, stating that Oviedo communicated to him verbally what he knew by personal experience of the settle- ment at Cartagena. Castellanos' poem is the second of a series of epic compositions in Spanish treating of the early colonization of America, Ercilla's being the earliest in date of publication.

Besides the not always exact information imparted by Aribau in his edition of the second and third part of the Khrjias, the following may be consulted: Nicolas Antonio, Bibliotheca hispana nova (Madrid. 1733-3S': Antonio Leon I Pinelo, Epitome, etc. (Madrid, 2nd. e.l. 1737-38); Acosta, Compendia hislorico del Descubrimienio y de la Cotonizacion de la .Vnrra Granada (Paris. 1S4S).

A full discussion of the life of Caslellanns, as far as data arc accessible, is given by Veroara, Hisloria de la literatura >ti Nueva Granada. The Hakluyt Society in Markham's tr. of The Expedition of I'rsua and Aguirre has some biographical information, taken from Acosta. Allusions to Castellanos are also in Bandelier, Gilded Man (New York, 1893). Mendi- burc. Dicdonario hist. biog. (Lima, 1S76>. II. contains a notice in which there are some errors. He attributes to Castellanos the authorship of a Historia Indiana, about which, however, nothing else is known.

Ad. F. Bandelier.

Castelli, Benedetto, mathematician and physi- cist; b. at Perugia, Italy, 1577; d. at Koine, 1644. He was destined by his parents for the sen ice "I the Church and entered the Order of St. Benedict, at Monte • lassino. Tin -re lie became abbot, and in 1640 he was transferred to the Abbey of San Benedetto Aloysio. He was specially interested in the mathe- matical sciences and their application to hydraulics. Galileo, his teacher, and Toricelli. one of his pupils, speak very highly of his scientific attainments, and both of them frequently asked his advice. In lf>2;> Urban VIII invited him to Rome and later appointed him chief mathematician to the pope and public pro-