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
