Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/173

I L F I L 163 Jiis childhood, his parents must have been in easy circum stances, and the supposition is confirmed by the fact that he enjoyed all the advantages of a liberal education, first under the Jesuits of Florence, and then in the university of Pisa. At Pisa his mind became stored, not only with the results of patieut study in various branches of letters, but with the great historical associations linked with the former glory of the Pisan republic, and with one remarkable institution of which Pisa was the seat. To the tourist who now visits Pisa the banners and emblems of the order of St Stephen are mere matter of curiosity, but they had a serious significance two hundred years ago to the young Tuscan, who knew that these naval crusaders formed the main defence of his country and commerce against the Turkish, Algerine, and Tunisian corsairs. After a five years residence in Pisa he returned to Florence, where he married Anna, daughter of the senator and marquis Scipione Capponi, and withdrew to a small villa at Figline, not far from the city. Abjuring the thought of writing amatory poetry in consequence of the premature death of a young lady to whom he had been attached, he occupied himself chiefly with literary pursuits, above all the com position of Italian and Latin poetry. His own literary eminence, the opportunities enjoyed by him as a member of the celebrated Academy Delia Crusca for making known his critical taste and classical knowledge, and the social relations within the reach of a noble Florentine so closely allied with the great house of Capponi, sufficiently explain the intimate terms on which he stood with such eminent men of letters as Magalotti, Menzini, Gori, and Redi. The last-named, the author of Bacchus in Tuscany, was not only one of the most brilliant poets of his time, and a safe literary adviser ; he was the court physician, and his court influence was employed with zeal and effect in his friend s favour. Filicaia s rural seclusion was owing even more to his straitened means than to his rural tastes. If he ceased at length to pine in obscurity, the change was owing not merely to the fact that his poetical genius, fired by the deliverance of Vienna from the Turks in 1683, poured forth the right strains at the right time, but also to the influence of Redi, who riot only laid Filicaia s verses before his own sovereign, but had them transmitted with the least possible delay to the foreign princes whose noble deeds they sung. The first recompense came, however, not from those princes, but from Christina, the ex-queen of Sweden, who, from her circle of savans and courtiers at Rome, spon taneously and generously announced to Filicaia her wish to bear the expense of educating his two sons, enhancing her kindness by the delicate request that it should remain a secret. And now the tide of Filicaia s fortunes turned. The grand-duke of Tuscany, Cosmo III, conferred on him an important office, the commissionership of official balloting. He was named governor of Volterra in 1696, where he strenuously exerted himself to raise the tone of public morality. Both there and at Pisa, where he was subse quently governor in 1700, his popularity was so great that on his removal the inhabitants of both cities petitioned for his recall. He passed the close of his life at Florence ; the grand -duke raised him to the rank of senator, and he died in that city on the 24th of September 1707. He was buried in the family vault in the church of St Peter, and a monument was erected to his memory by his sole surviving son Scipione Filicaia. In the six celebrated odes inspired by the great victory of Sobieski, Filicaia took a lyrical flight which has placed him at moments on a level with the greatest Italian poets. They are, however, unequal, like all his poetry, reflecting in some passages the native vigour of his genius and purest inspirations of his tastes, whilst in others they are deformed by the affectations of the Scicentisti. When thoroughly natural and spontaneous, as in the two sonnets " Italia, Italia, o tu cui feo la sorte " and " Dov e, Italia, il tuo braccio ? e a che ti serve ; " in the verses " Alia beata Vergine," " Al divino amore ; " in the sonnet " Sulla fede nelle disgrazie " the truth and beauty of thought and language recall the verse of Petrarch. Besides the poems published in the complete Venice edition of 1762, several other pieces appeared for the first time in the small Florence edition brought out by Barbera in 1864. FILIGREE, formerly written filigrain or filigrane (the Italian filigrana, Fr. jiligrane, Span, filigmna, Germ. Drahtgeflecht], jewel work of a delicate kind made with threads and beads usually of gold and silver. The com pound word from the Latin jilum, thread, and granum, grain, is not found in Ducange, and is indeed of modern origin. Though filigree has become a special branch of jewel work in modern times it was anciently part of the ordinary work of the jeweller. Signer Castellani states, in his lecture on " Antique Jewellery," that all the jewel lery of the Etruscans and Greeks was made by soldering together wires and grains or minute plates of gold rather than by hammering or stamping the precious metals iu dies, The art may be said to consist in curling, twisting, and plaiting fine pliable threads of metal, and uniting them at their points of contact with gold or silver solder and borax, by the help of the blow-pipe. Small grains or beads of the same metals are often set in the eyes of volutes, on the junctions, or at intervals at which they will set off the wire work effectively. The more delicate work is generally protected by framework of stouter wire. Brooches, crosses, earrings, and other personal ornaments of modern filigree are generally surrounded and subdivided by bands of square or flat metal, giving consistency to the filling up, which would not otherwise keep its proper shape. Probably the oldest existing jewel work is that which has been found by Belzoni, Wilkinson, Mariette, and other Egyptian discoverers in the tombs of Thebes and other places. Filigree forms an important feature of the orna mentation. Amongst the jewellery now in the British Museum, and in the Louvre in Paris, are examples of the round plaited gold chains of fine wire, such as are still made by the filigree workers of India, and known as Trichinopoly chains. From some of these are hung smaller chains of finer wire with minute fishes and other pendants fastened to them. Most of the rings found in these collections are whipped with gold wire soldered to the hoop. The Greek and Etruscan filigree of about 3000 years ago is of extra ordinary fineness and very perfect execution. A number of earrings and other personal ornaments found in Central Italy are preserved in the Campana collection of the Louvre and amongst the gems of the British Museum. Almost all of them are made of filigree work. Some ear rings are in the form of flowers of geometric design, bordered by one or more rims each made up of minute volutes of gold wire, and this kind of ornament is varied by slight differences in the way of disposing the number or arrange ment of the volutes. But the feathers and petals of modern Italian filigree are not seen in these ancient designs. In many earrings chains hang from the upper part, and tiny birds, such as doves or peacocks covered with enamel, are set amongst these hanging ornaments. Other Etruscan earrings are short tubes of gold, half or three-quarters of an inch long by half an inch or less in diameter, with a plate of gold attached to the side, and the whole surface covered with filigree soldered on in minute patterns. Many rings resemble fishes with the tails in their mouths, made up of thin plates of gold and wire work of the same metal. A beautiful collection of antique examples of Greek