Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/64

54 K Y S C smith s work that yet exists in Italy. It was begun by Ugolino Veri of Siena in 1338, and was made to contain the Holy Corporal from Bolsena, which, according to the legend, became miraculously stained with blood during the celebration of mass to convince a sceptical priest of the truth of the doctrine of transubstantiation. This is supposed to have happened in the middle of the 13th century, while Urban IV. was residing at Orvieto; and it was to commemorate this miracle that the existing cathedral was built. On the south side is the chapel of S. Brizio, separated from the nave by a fine 14th-century wrought-iron screen. The walls and vault of this chapel are covered with some of the best-preserved and finest frescos in Italy among the noblest works of Fra Angelico, his pupil Benozzo Gozzoli, and Luca Signorelli, mainly painted between 1450 and 1501, the latter being of especial importance in the history of art owing to their great influence on Michelangelo in his early days (see Symonds, Renaissance in Italy Fine Arts, pp. 278-291). The choir stalls are fine and elaborate specimens of tarsia and rich wood-carving the work of various Sienese artists in the 14th century. In 16th-century sculpture the cathedral is especially rich, containing many statues, groups, and altar-reliefs by Simone Mosca, Ippolito Scalza, and Gian di Bologna, some of them well designed and care fully executed, but all showing strongly the rapid decay into which the art of that time was falling. The well, now disused, called II pozzo di S. Patrizio, is one of the chief curiosities of Orvieto. It is 180 feet deep to the water-level and 46 feet in diameter, cut in the rock, with a double winding inclined plane, so that oxen could ascend and descend to carry up the water from the bottom. It was begun by the architect San Gallo in 1527 for Clement VII., who fled to Orvieto after the sack of Rome, and was finished by Simone Mosca under Paul III. It resembles in many respects the " Well of Joseph " (Saladin) in the citadel of Cairo. The Palazzo Faina has an interesting collection of objects found in Etruscan tombs, of which a large number exist in the neighbourhood of Orvieto. The church of S. Domenico contains one of the finest works in sculpture by Arnolfo del Cambio. This is the tomb with recumbent effigy of the Cardinal Brago or De Braye (1282), with much beautiful sculpture and mosaic. It is signed HOC OPVS FECIT ARNVLFVS. It was imitated by Giovanni Pisano in his monument to Pope Benedict XI. at Perugia. See Guglielmo della Valle, Storia del Duomo di Orvieto (1791), and Stampe del Duomo di Orvieto (1791) ; Luzi, Descrizione del Duomo di Orvieto, &c., 1836; Cicognara, Storia della Scultura, 2d eel, 1823-24; Perkins, Tuscan Scutytors, 1864; Yasari, File dci jrittori, &c., Milanesi s ed., 1878-82; Gruner, Die Basreliefs des Doms zu Orvieto, 1858 ; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Painting in Italy, vols. i. and iii., 1866; Benois, Cathedrale d Orvieto, 1877. For Etruscan remains see Dennis, Cities of Etruria, ii. p. 36, 1878. ORYEKHOFF-ZUYEFF, or ORYEKHOVSKIY POGOST, a village of European Russia, in the Pokroff district of the Vladimir government, 12 miles west of Pokroff by rail, on the Klyazrna, a subtributary of the Volga. A great cotton factory in the vicinity has become the centre of a new town, which is called after the village, but also frequently Nikolskoye. About 12,600 hands are employed in the cotton manufacture itself, and about 6000 in digging peats and making bricks for the firm. There are forty-two steam engines (978 horse-power), and goods were manufactured to the value of 8,328,000 roubles in 1881 (2,590,000 in 1861). The cotton is procured from Asia and western Europe, and the goods are sold throughout southern and south-eastern Russia. OSBORX, SHERARD (1822-1875), English admiral and explorer, was the son of Lieutenant-Colonel Osborn of the Madras army, and was born 25th April 1822. Entering the navy as a first-class volunteer in 1837, he was in the following year entrusted, though only a midshipman, with the command of a gunboat, the " Emerald, " at the attack on Kedah. He was present at the reduction of Canton in 1841, and at the capture of the batteries of Woo- sung in the following year. Having passed lieutenant in 1844, he was in the same year appointed gunnery mate of the " Collingwood," under Sir George Seymour in the Pacific. On account of his interest in the fate of many of his friends and messmates, he took a prominent part in advocating a new search expedition for Sir John Franklin. When it was agreed upon he was appointed to the com mand of one of the ships, and performed a remarkable sledge journey to the western extremity of Prince of Wales Island, of which he published an account entitled Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal, 1852. In the new expedi tion fitted out in the spring of that year he also took part as commander of the " Pioneer," and, after spending two trying winters up Wellington Channel, returned home in 1855. In 1856 he published the journals of Robert M Clure, giving a narrative of the discovery of the North- West Passage. Shortly after his return he was called to active service in connexion with the Russian war ; and in com mand of a light squadron of gunboats on the Sea of Azoff he distinguished himself in the destruction of the stores of the enemy at various points on the coast. Receiving post rank, he was appointed to the " Medusa," in which he continued to command the Sea of Azoff squadron until the conclusion of peace. As commander of the " Furious " he took a prominent part in the second Chinese war, during which he performed the remarkable feat of proving the navigability of the Yang-tsze, by taking the " Furious " as far up the river as Hankow, 600 miles from the sea. In 1859 he returned to England in broken health, and to support his family engaged in literary pursuits, contribut ing many important articles to Blackwood s Magazine, and publishing in December of that year The Career, Last Voyage, and Fate of Sir John Franklin. In 1864 he was appointed to the command of the "Royal Sovereign," to assist Captain Coles in his experiments regarding the turret system of shipbuilding. Retiring soon afterwards on half pay, he was in 1865 appointed agent to the Great Indian Peninsula Railway Company, and in 1867 man aging director of the Telegraph Construction and Main tenance Company, for the construction of a submarine system of telegraphy between Great Britain and her Eastern and Australian dependencies. In 1873 he was promoted rear-admiral. Continuing to interest himself in Arctic exploration, he induced A. H. Markham to visit Baffin s Bay in a whaler to report on the possibility of ice-naviga tion with the aid of steam. A record of his observations was published under the title of a Whaling Cruise to Baffin s Bay in 1873, with the result that a new Arctic expedition was fitted out in 1874. Osborn died 6th May 1875. OSCANS, or OPICANS, was the name given both by Greeks and Romans to one of the ancient nations of cen tral Italy. There can be no doubt that the original form of the name was Opscus, which, as we learn from Festus, was still used by Ennius. This the Greeks softened into Opicus, while the Latin writers always used Oscus as a national appellation, though they occasionally employ the term " opicus " in the sense of barbarous or ignorant. It is singular that, though there can be no doubt the name was a national one, it is not found in history as the name of any particular nation. No mention occurs of the Oscans among the populations of Italy that were succes sively reduced by the Roman arms ; but we learn inciden tally from a passage in Livy (x. 20) that the language of the Samnites and Campanians was Oscan ; and it is cer-