and to the sublime episode that relates to it in the poem of Dante. The lords of the Gherardesca had for a long period served faithfully the republic of Pisa. Ugolino was one of the leaders of the Ghibeline party in that town. Impatient of the rivalry of some members of his own party, he entered into alliance with the Guelphs, and particularly with Nino Visconti, judge of Gallura in the island of Sardinia, and descended from one of the most ancient families of Pisa, in order to raise himself to supreme power in the republic. The plot being discovered, Ugolino was imprisoned; but he succeeded in recovering his freedom through the aid of the Florentines and some Pisans who were favourable to him, and whom he attached more and more to his person by bribes. Intrusted in 1284 with the chief command of the fleet manned by the citizens of Pisa against the Genoese, he betrayed the confidence which had been placed in him, by acting at the naval battle of La Meloria in such a way as to enable the enemy to gain a complete victory. Nevertheless, so great was his influence with the Guelph party, whilst he was yet nominally a chief of the Ghibelines, that the Pisans finding themselves in a difficult and dangerous position between the rival factions, had recourse to Count Ugolino as a mediator, and he was consequently elected captain-general (an office analogous to that of dictator) for ten years. He then took off the mask, and openly declared himself a Guelph, and proceeded to inflict summary vengeance on his personal and political enemies. To secure himself against external attacks, he gave up some of the best strongholds of the state to the people of Lucca, and offered to the Genoese the possession of Castro in the island of Sardinia in exchange for the prisoners of Pisa, who had been in their hands since the time of the battle of La Meloria. These unfortunate Pisans, however, nobly refused to accept freedom at the cost of their country's interest and honour, and the intended bargain succeeded only in injuring the reputation of Count Ugolino with all parties in Pisa. Outraged by his misgovernment and by the treacherous policy which he pursued with regard to the external relations of the republic, Guelphs and Ghibelines leagued for his overthrow; but, though stripped of power for a time, he availed himself of a popular tumult to recover it, and to take vengeance on his enemies, the Gualandi, Sismondi, Lanfranchi, &c. These potent families, and at their head the archbishop of Pisa, Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, waited for a favourable opportunity to renew the struggle with the tyrant; they excited, meanwhile, by every means in their power a spirit of insurrection among the populace, and at length having defeated his guards, seized Count Ugolino, his innocent sons Gaddo and Uguccione, and his nephews Brigata and Anselmuccio, and threw them all into a dungeon at the bottom of a tower in Pisa, styled ever since the Tower of Hunger (la Torre della Fame). Archbishop Ruggieri and his associates, partly to satisfy personal revenge, partly to rid their faction of a powerful foe, determined to put Ugolino to death, and his children and nephews with him. The means adopted by them to achieve their object were even more atrocious than the object itself. Archbishop Ruggieri ordered the keys of the prison, in which the doomed family were languishing, to be thrown into the Arno—this was done, and Ugolino and his companions were left to their fate. The moral and physical tortures of their situation, upon which history was silent, divined by the great heart of the poet, were described by Dante in the 33d canto of the Inferno with such depth of grief and horror as places that passage of the Divina Commedia beside the Laocoon and the Niobe of the ancients among the chief sublimities of art. Dante, although a Ghibeline, banishes the city of Pisa, for the cruel doom of Ugolino, from the pale of humanity, in the terrible lines which end the episode of Count Ugolino, but he at the same time condemns the latter as a traitor to his country, together with Archbishop Ruggieri, to the frozen lake at the bottom of hell.—A. S., O.
GHIBELINES or GUIBELINES. See Guelphs, &c.
GHIBERTI, Lorenzo, a famous Italian sculptor and bronze founder, and one of the great pioneers of the Italian renaissance, was born at Florence in 1381; his stepfather, Bartoluccio, who was a working jeweller, brought up his son to his own art; but Lorenzo seems to have also studied painting at the same time. In 1400 Florence was visited by the plague, and Ghiberti fled to escape it to Rimini, where he entered the service of Pandolfo Malatesta. In 1401-2, however, he returned to Florence, being induced to enter into the competition tor the new gates of the Baptistery of Florence, to correspond with those of Andrea Pisano, made in 1330. The original contract for the first set of gates made by Ghiberti, was given to him and to his stepfather, November 23, 1403, but they had several assistants, among whom was Donatello; but his chief assistant appears to have been Michelozzo di Bartolommeo, who was engaged at seventy-five florins the year, or about thirty shillings a week, in our money at the present time. Ghiberti himself received from the beginning to 1407 about nine hundred florins, and there remained still due two hundred florins. These gates, Ghiberti's first pair, but the second of the Baptistery, were fixed in their place, 19th April, 1424, their subjects being from the Life of Christ, or the New Testament and accessory church history, in twenty-eight compartments. They were put opposite the cathedral, in the place of those of Andrea Pisano, representing twenty-eight subjects from the life of the Baptist; Andrea's being moved to the side entrance opposite to the Bigallo. It was now decided to have a set of gates for the third entrance into the Baptistery, the subjects to be taken from the Old Testament. On the 2nd of January, 1425, Ghiberti received his commission for this third pair. The ten principal panels were finished in 1447, and for these Ghiberti received one thousand two hundred florins. The entire gates, comprising the enriched architrave, were finished and gilded in 1452, and fixed in their place on the 16th of June of that year. These are the gates in all their golden splendour, which were afterwards pronounced by Michelangelo as worthy of being the gates of Paradise. As works of art, these gates are remarkable for novelty of treatment, as well as their skilful modelling and casting. There are casts of them in the school of art at South Kensington and at the Crystal Palace. They are 18 feet 1 inch high, by 12 feet 5 inches wide, exclusive of the cornice. The ten principal subjects of the panels are treated as pictures; that is, the figures are in high, middle, and low relief; but Ghiberti has managed his materials so skilfully that the portions in high relief do not cast their shadows on the distant parts in low relief. These gates were put in the place of Ghiberti's first pair in the Baptistery, which were removed to the side. The two sets occupied Ghiberti altogether forty-nine years, from 1403 to 1452. They were therefore literally a life-work, although, of course, Ghiberti executed many other commissions in the meanwhile; among them several metal works of considerable importance, and still in good preservation at Florence and at Siena. His son, Vittorio Ghiberti, assisted him in his later works; he died at Florence in 1455. In 1821 a folio volume was published on these Florentine gates, with engravings by Lasinio, Le tre Porte del Battistero di Firenze. In 1833 August Hagen published at Leipsic a remarkable story built upon the life of Ghiberti, under the title Die Chronik seiner Vaterstadt vom Florentiner Lorenz Ghiberti, 2 vols. 12mo, professing to be from the Italian; it is a historical romance. Ghiberti did leave a chronicle, and the second part of it is inserted in the beginning of Le Monnier's edition of Vasari, published at Florence in 1846; but it is very brief, and of no great importance.—(Vasari, ed. Le Monnier, vol. iii.)—R. N. W.
GHIKA, Family of: a celebrated princely house, which has given numerous hospodars to Moldavia and Wallachia. The ancestor of the family was Gregor Ghika, a peasant's son, born in the beginning of the seventeenth century, at the village of Kiuperli in Albania. Getting into the service of the governor of Moldavia, Stephen Burduze, he went with him to Constantinople, and there, by dint of intrigues, succeeded in procuring his master's demission, and in obtaining for himself, in 1658, the hospodarship of the Danubian provinces. The dethroned prince fled into Hungary, and from thence tried to reconquer his province by force of arms; but the attempt failed, and in the battle of Turkul Frumos Gregor Ghika all but annihilated the army of his rival. Stephen now sought help from the woivode of Wallachia; but, a new campaign ensuing, Ghika was once more victorious, and in consequence became hospodar of the united provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia, November, 1659. He ruled till 1662, when his son, Gregor II., rose against him, and usurped the princely dignity. The latter, in his turn, was driven from the government at the end of a few years, and though reinstated soon after, lost it again in 1673, when he finally fled the country. He died of poison at Constantinople about 1680. The family, after his death, continued to be amongst the most influential in the Danubian provinces; but it was not till 1726 that another Ghika, Gregor III., became
