Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/715

P E R P E S 683 known as the Farnesina, originally built for the Sienese Agostino Chigi, a wealthy banker. This villa, like all Peruzzi s works, is remarkable for its graceful design and the delicacy of its detail. It is best known for the frescos painted there by Raphael and his pupils to illustrate the stories of Psyche and Galatea. One of the loggie has frescos by Peruzzi s own hand, the story of Medusa, a work of considerable decorative beauty. On account of his success in this building Peruzzi was appointed by Leo X. in 1520 architect to St Peter s at a salary of 250 scudi, a handsome sum for that time ; his design for its completion was not, however, carried out. During the sack of Rome in 1527 Peruzzi was taken prisoner, and barely escaped with his life, on condition of his painting the portrait of Constable de Bourbon, who had been killed during the siege (see Vasari). From Rome he escaped to his native city Siena, where he was made city architect, and designed fortifications for its defence, a great part of which still exist. Soon afterwards he returned to Rome, where he made designs for a palace for the Orsini family, and built the palaces Massimi and Vidoni, as well as others in the south of Italy. He died in 1536, and was buried by the side of Raphael in the Pantheon. Peruzzi was an eager student of mathematics and the science of perspective ; he was also a fair classical scholar, and was much influenced by the treatise of Vitruvius. Like many of the great artists of his time, he was remark able for the varied extent of his knowledge and skill. A most able architect, a fair painter, and a scientific engineer, he also practised minor arts, such as stucco-work in relief, sgraffito, and the decorative painted arabesques which the influence of Raphael did so much to bring into use. His best existing works in fresco are in the Castel di Bel- caro and the church of Fontegiusta in Siena. For Siena cathedral he also designed a magnificent wooden organ- case, painted and gilt, rich with carved arabesques in friezes and pilasters ; he also designed the high altar and the Cappella del Battista. His chief pupil was the architect Serlio, who, in his work on architecture, gratefully acknowledges the great debt he owed to Peruzzi s instruction. The English National Gallery possesses an interesting drawing by his hand (No. 167). The subject is the Adoration of the Magi, and it is of special value, because the heads of the three kings are portraits of Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian. The Uflizi and the library at Siena contain a number of Peruzzi s designs and drawings, many of which are now of priceless value to the student of Roman anti quities, as they show ancient buildings which have been destroyed since the 16th century. Vasari, Vita di Baldassarc Peruzzi (Milanesi s ed., vol. iv. p. 489, 1882) ; Milizia, Mcmorie degli Architetti (1781, vol. i. pp. 210-215); Delia Valle, Lettere Sancsi (1782-86); Gaye, Cartcggio inedito d Artisti (1839-40); Lanzi, Storia Pittorica (1804); and Plainer, Bcschreibung der Stadt Rom (1830-42). PERVIGILIUM. See VIGIL. PERVIGILIUM VENERIS, the Vigil of Venus, a short Latin poem, in praise of spring as the season of love and flowers. "Written professedly in early spring on the eve of a three -nights festival (Vigil) in honour of Venus (probably April 1-3), it describes in warm and poetical lan guage the annual awakening of the vegetable and animal world in spring through the all-pervading influence of the foam-born goddess, whose birth and connexion with Rome and the Csesars are also touched upon. The joyous tone which runs through the poem passes suddenly at the close into one of lyric sadness : " The nightingale is singing, but I am silent. When comes my spring 1 " It consists of ninety-three verses in trochaic tetrameter catalectic and is divided into strophes of unequal length by the re frain, " Cras amet qui nunquam amavit ; quique amavit eras amet." The author, date, and place of composition are unknown. Formerly it was ascribed to Catullus, but from its late Latinity, approximating in some points to Italian, 1 it can hardly have been earlier, and was prob ably later, than the latter half of the 2d century A.D. It is certainly earlier than Fulgentius (about 480-550 A.D.), who imitated it. The references to Hybla and Etna (or Enna), from which some have thought that the poem is Sicilian, need be no more than poetical allusions to Sicily as the flowery land. Virgil s description of spring (Georg., ii. 323-342) is imitated somewhat closely; compare especi ally verse 62 with Virgil s 327 ; again, v. 85 is a copy of sEneid, xi. 458. This seems to disprove Bernhardy s con jecture that the poem is a translation from the Greek. From its exuberant rhetoric Orelli ascribes it to an African poet of the 3d or 4th century A.D. Biicheler places it between Florus and Nemesianus, i.e., in the 2d or 3d century A.D. Wernsdorf suggested as its author Annius Florus in the time of Hadrian ; Heidtmann conjectured Appuleius ; Baehrens refers it to Tiberianus, a poet of the 4th century. But there are not data enough to determine the authorship. The Pcrvigilium is preserved in the Paris MSS. 10318 (Codex Salmasianus] and 8071 (Codex Thuancus or Pithocanus); the former (the better of the two) belongs to the 7th or beginning of the 8th century, the latter to the 9th or beginning of the 10th. They differ too much to have been copied from the same original. The age of the MSS. refutes the theory, sometimes broached, that the poem is modern. The first edition was published by Lipsius at Antwerp in 1611 ; and there are modern editions by "Wernsdorf (Poctse. Latini Minorcs, vol. hi.), Orelli (1832), Biicheler (1859), Baehrens (1877). There are translations into English verse by Thomas Stanley (1651) and Parnell, into prose by "W. K. Kelly ; a French translation by Sanadon ; a German one by Kirchner. PESARO, a city and seaport of Italy, the capital of the province of Pesaro and Urbino, lies on the coast of the Adriatic 36 miles north of Ancona and 20 1 south of Rimini on the right bank of the Foglia, the ancient Pisaurus. The ground on which it is built is only from 10 to 40 feet above the sea, but it is surrounded by hills, on the east by Monte Ardizio, on the west by Monte Accio or San Bartolo, which derives one of its names from the Roman dramatist L. Attius, born and buried on the spot. The city walls, which were strengthened by bastions and moat and made a circuit of about a mile, were in 1830 transformed into a public promenade. Besides the ancient cathedral of the Annunciation (restored since 1860) the more conspicuous buildings are the prefecture (a palace originally erected by the Sforza, and restored by Francesco Maria della Rovere), the seminary, the Rossini theatre (opened in 1818), the fortress or Rocca Costanzia (built by Costanzo Sforza in 1474), the harbour-fort (due to Napoleon I.), and the large lunatic asylum. Rossini, who was a native of Pesaro, left all his fortune to found a musical lyceum in the city, and his statue by Marochetti (1864) stands near the railway station. The Olivieri library (established by the antiquary of that name, author of Marmora Pisaurensia, <fcc.) contains about 14,000 volumes, MSS. of Tasso s, <tc., various antiquities, and a fine collection of majolica from the old Urbino manufactory. Among the industries of Pesaro are the growing, spinning, and weaving of silk, tanning, iron-founding, and the manufacture of glass and pottery. The harbour is of no great importance, and the aggregate burden of the 437 vessels entering or clearing in 1883 was less than 12,000 tons. The population of the city and port in 1870 was 11,952 and in 1880 12,913; that of the commune 19,691 and 20,909 in the same years. The ancient Pisaurum in the territory of the Galli Senones became a Ptoman colony in 184 B.C. and soon grew to be a flourish- 1 Thus de is very frequently used like Italian di ; totw (v. 22) in stead of omnes, Ital. tutti ; and inane (ib. ) in the sense of " to-morrow," Ital. domani.