both by precept and example, and left behind him several illegitimate children. For the extravagances of his later years the plea of insanity has been put forward. On the 20th of September 1840 he was seized with a fit and died.
The first and fullest account of Dr Francia was given to the world by two Swiss surgeons, Rengger and Longchamp, whom he had detained from 1819 to 1825—Essai historique sur la révolution de Paraguay et la gouvernement dictatorial du docteur Francia (Paris, 1827). Their work was almost immediately translated into English under the title of The Reign of Doctor Joseph G. R. De Francia in Paraguay (1827). About eleven years after there appeared at London Letters on Paraguay, by J. P. and W. P. Robertson, two young Scotsmen whose hopes of commercial success had been rudely destroyed by the dictator’s interference. The account which they gave of his character and government was of the most unfavourable description, and they rehearsed and emphasized their accusations in Francia’s Reign of Terror (1839) and Letters on South America (3 vols., 1843). From the very pages of his detractors Thomas Carlyle succeeded in extracting materials for a brilliant defence of the dictator “as a man or sovereign of iron energy and industry, of great and severe labour.” It appeared in the Foreign Quarterly Review for 1843, and is reprinted in his Critical and Miscellaneous Essays. Sir Richard F. Burton gives a graphic sketch of Francia’s life and a favourable notice of his character in his Letters from the Battlefields of Paraguay (1870), while C. A. Washburn takes up a hostile position in his History of Paraguay (1871).
FRANCIABIGIO (1482–1525), Florentine painter. The name
of this artist is generally given as Mercantonio Franciabigio;
it appears, however, that his only real ascertained name was
Francesco di Cristofano; and that he was currently termed
Francia Bigio, the two appellatives being distinct. He was
born in Florence, and studied under Albertinelli for some months.
In 1505 he formed the acquaintance of Andrea del Sarto; and
after a while the two painters set up a shop in common in the
Piazza del Grano. Franciabigio paid much attention to anatomy
and perspective, and to the proportions of his figures, though
these are often too squat and puffy in form. He had a large
stock of artistic knowledge, and was at first noted for diligence.
As years went on, and he received frequent commissions for
all sorts of public painting for festive occasions, his diligence
merged in something which may rather be called workmanly
offhandedness. He was particularly proficient in fresco, and
Vasari even says that he surpassed all his contemporaries in this
method—a judgment which modern connoisseurship does not
accept. In the court of the Servites (or cloister of the Annunziata)
in Florence he painted in 1513 the “Marriage of the Virgin,”
as a portion of a series wherein Andrea del Sarto was chiefly
concerned. The friars having uncovered this work before it
was quite finished, Franciabigio was so incensed that, seizing
a mason’s hammer, he struck at the head of the Virgin, and some
other heads; and the fresco, which would otherwise be his
masterpiece in that method, remains thus mutilated. At the
Scalzo, in another series of frescoes on which Andrea was likewise
employed, he executed in 1518–1519 the “Departure of John
the Baptist for the Desert,” and the “Meeting of the Baptist
with Jesus”; and, at the Medici palace at Poggio a Caiano,
in 1521, the “Triumph of Cicero.” Various works which have
been ascribed to Raphael are now known or reasonably deemed
to be by Franciabigio. Such are the “Madonna del Pozzo,”
in the Uffizi Gallery; the half figure of a “Young Man,” in
the Louvre (see also Francia); and the famous picture in
the Fuller-Maitland collection, a “Young Man with a Letter.”
These two works show a close analogy in style to another in the
Pitti gallery, avowedly by Franciabigio, a “Youth at a Window,”
and to some others which bear this painter’s recognized monogram.
The series of portraits, taken collectively, placed beyond dispute
the eminent and idiosyncratic genius of the master. Two other
works of his, of some celebrity, are the “Calumny of Apelles,”
in the Pitti, and the “Bath of Bathsheba” (painted in 1523),
in the Dresden gallery.
FRANCIS (Lat. Franciscus, Ital. Francesco, Span. Francisco,
Fr. François, Ger. Franz), a masculine proper name meaning
“Frenchman.” As a Christian name it originated with St
Francis of Assisi, whose baptismal name was Giovanni, but who
was called Francesco by his father on returning from a journey
in France. The saint’s fame made the name exceedingly popular
from his day onwards.
FRANCIS I. (1708–1765), Roman emperor and grand duke of
Tuscany, second son of Leopold Joseph, duke of Lorraine, and
his wife Elizabeth Charlotte, daughter of Philip, duke of Orleans,
was born on the 8th of December 1708. He was connected
with the Habsburgs through his grandmother Eleanore, daughter
of the emperor Ferdinand III., and wife of Charles Leopold of
Lorraine. The emperor Charles VI. favoured the family, who,
besides being his cousins, had served the house of Austria with
distinction. He had designed to marry his daughter Maria
Theresa to Clement, the elder brother of Francis. On the death
of Clement he adopted the younger brother as her husband.
Francis was brought up at Vienna with Maria Theresa on the
understanding that they were to be married, and a real affection
arose between them. At the age of fifteen, when he was brought
to Vienna, he was established in the Silesian duchy of Teschen,
which had been mediatized and granted to his father by the
emperor in 1722. He succeeded his father as duke of Lorraine
in 1729, but the emperor, at the end of the Polish War of Succession,
desiring to compensate his candidate Stanislaus Leszczynski
for the loss of his crown in 1735, persuaded Francis to exchange
Lorraine for the reversion of the grand duchy of Tuscany. On
the 12th of February 1736 he was married to Maria Theresa,
and they went for a short time to Florence, when he succeeded
to the grand duchy in 1737 on the death of John Gaston, the
last of the ruling house of Medici. His wife secured his election
to the Empire on the 13th of September 1745, in succession to
Charles VII., and she made him co-regent of her hereditary
dominions. Francis was well content to leave the reality of
power to his able wife. He had a natural fund of good sense
and some business capacity, and was a useful assistant to Maria
Theresa in the laborious task of governing the complicated
Austrian dominions, but his functions appear to have been of a
purely secretarial character. He died suddenly in his carriage
while returning from the opera at Innsbruck on the 18th of
August 1765.
See A. von Arneth, Geschichte Maria Theresias (Vienna, 1863–1879).
FRANCIS II. (1768–1835), the last Roman emperor, and, as
Francis I., first emperor of Austria, was the son of Leopold II.,
grand-duke of Tuscany, afterwards emperor, and of his wife
Maria Louisa, daughter of Charles III. of Spain. He was born
at Florence on the 12th of February 1768. In 1784 he was
brought to Vienna to complete his education under the eye of
his uncle the emperor Joseph II., who was childless. Joseph
was repelled by the frigid and retiring character of his nephew,
and is said to have treated him with an impatient contempt
which confirmed his natural timidity; but after the marriage
of Francis to Elizabeth of Württemberg (1788) their relations
improved. At the close of his uncle’s reign he saw some service
in the ill-conducted war with Turkey, and kept a careful diary
of his experiences. The death of his wife in childbirth on the
18th of February 1790 was followed by the death of his uncle
on the 20th; and Francis acted as regent with Prince Kaunitz
until his father came from Florence. On the 19th of September
he married his first cousin Maria Theresa, daughter of Ferdinand,
king of Naples, by whom he was the father of his successor
Ferdinand I., of Maria Louisa, wife of Napoleon, and of the
archduke Francis, father of the emperor Francis Joseph. After
her death (1807) he married Maria Ludovica Beatrix of Este
(1808), and when she died he made a fourth marriage with
Carolina Augusta of Bavaria (1816).
He succeeded to the Austrian dominions and the empire on the death of his father on the 1st of March 1792. The position was a trying one for a young prince twenty-four years of age. The dominions of the house of Austria, widely scattered in the Low Countries, Germany and Italy, were exposed to the attacks of the French revolutionary governments and of Napoleon. He was dragged into all the coalitions against France, and in the early days of his reign he had to guard against the ambition of Prussia, and the aggressions of Russia in Poland and Turkey.
