SCHIAVONE, Andrea, a native of Dalmatia, was born in 1522, and studied painting in Venice, where he became a follower of Titian. He attained an extraordinary power of colouring; but as he was always poor he painted hastily, and his pictures are often careless in drawing, and generally wanting in expression. He sometimes worked as a journeyman for cabinetmakers and house decorators; but his despised pictures enriched their possessors after his death. He died in 1582; his family name was Medola, Schiavone or Sclave designating his nation only, as Andrea Medola, Lo Schiavone. The public buildings of Venice still possess some good works by this painter.—(Ridolfi, Vite dei Pittori, &c.; Zanetti, Pittura Veneziana.)—R. N. W.
SCHIAVONE, Gregorio, likewise a Dalmatian, was born about 1430, and studied painting in the school of Squarcione at Padua, where he was the fellow pupil of Mantegna. The National gallery possesses a small altarpiece by Gregorio, in tempera, in ten compartments, signed "Opus. Schiavoni. Discipuli. Squarcioni. S." It is hard and meagre in form, but is well coloured.—R. N. W.
SCHICK, Gottlieb, a celebrated German painter, was born at Stuttgart in 1779. He learned painting of David, but disliking his manner went to Rome, and there endeavoured to form a style of religious art from the study of Raphael and the earlier painters of sacred subjects. He found at first little encouragement, and he died when his works were beginning to be appreciated. Schlegel terms him the foremost in the work of the regeneration of German art, the pioneer in the struggle rendered famous by the genius of Cornelius and Overbeck. Schick's chief works are the "Sacrifice of Abraham," and the large mythological piece, "Apollo and the Shepherds," now in the royal palace at Stuttgart—a work crowded with figures, admirably drawn, coloured in a bright cheerful manner, and graceful and poetical in feeling. The children of Von Humboldt are his most successful effort in portraiture. He also painted some large poetic landscapes. Schick died at Stuttgart in 1818.—J. T—e.
SCHIDONE. See Schedone.
SCHILL, Ferdinand de, a Prussian officer and famous partisan leader in the war with France, was born in 1773. He was descended from a noble family originally from Hungary. His father, a lieutenant-colonel in the Prussian service, devoted young Schill from his childhood to a military life. After completing his studies in the college at Breslau, he entered a regiment of hussars in 1789, and took part in the early campaigns against revolutionary France. He was severely wounded at the battle of Jena in 1806, and on his recovery organized a free corps with which he performed numerous gallant exploits against the French invaders. The success of his plans contributed greatly to revive the spirit of the country; he became a prodigious favourite not only with the court, but with the whole nation, and was advanced to the rank of colonel. Along with the duke of Brunswick and the elector of Hesse he became one of the chiefs of the secret society called the Tugenbund. He made various incursions into Westphalia, and inflicted so much damage that Napoleon proclaimed him as a brigand, and King Jerome set a price upon his head, and complained to the king of Prussia, who was obliged, through fear of the French, to promise that he would bring Schill before a court-martial. The gallant patriot, however, continued his daring enterprises against the enemies of his country, towards whom he cherished a deep hatred. In May, 1809, he obtained possession of Stralsund; and while fortifying this port, he was attacked by an overwhelming force of Dutch and Danes in the French service. Though overmatched he maintained his position with desperate valour, and slew one of the Dutch generals in single combat; but shortly after he fell, sword in hand (31st May, 1809). The death of this gallant and romantic leader, contributed powerfully to rouse the Prussian nation from its lethargy to do battle in behalf of its independence.—J. T.
SCHILLER, Johann Cristoph Friedrich, the greatest of German poets, if Göthe be excepted, was born in 1759 at Marbach, a small town of Würtemburg, on the banks of the Neckar. His father had been a surgeon, and afterwards an ensign and captain in the Bavarian army. Before Schiller was born he had retired from the service, but was still retained in the pay of the duke of Würtemburg as the layer-out and superintendent of his pleasure grounds at Ludwigsburg, and Solitude his principal country residence. Both the father and the mother of Schiller were persons of great probity and good sense; but it was from his mother more particularly, who was a woman of warm affections and deep piety, that he seems to have derived his poetical sensibility and taste. His early education was subject to frequent interruptions, owing to the migratory habits which the occupation of the father entailed upon the family. In his ninth year he was sent to school at Ludwigsburg, where the family were now settled; and whatever progress he may have made in scholarship, the following anecdote shows that he had begun, even thus early, "to muse on nature with a poet's eye." In his seventh year, having disappeared during a tremendous thunder-storm, he was found, after an anxious search, perched high on the bough of a tree, gazing at the tempestuous sky, in raptures with the beauty of the lightning, and eager "to see where it was coming from." He was at first destined for the clerical profession; but on the offer being made by the duke of Würtemburg to enrol him in the new school which he had established at Stuttgart, and from which theology was excluded, this design was abandoned, although not without reluctance on the part both of Schiller and his parents. At the Karls-schule at Stuttgart, which Schiller entered in his fourteenth year (1773), the troubles of his life began. As each pupil had to choose some special study with a view to his future profession, Schiller entered first upon the study of law, which he soon afterwards exchanged for that of medicine. Neither of these were very congenial callings; but he might, perhaps, have reconciled himself to them, had it not been for the chilling and repulsive formalism which pervaded the whole establishment. The school was regulated on principles of the most inflexible martinetism. "The process of teaching and living," says Carlyle, "was conducted with the stiff formality of military drilling; everything went on by statute and ordinance, there was no scope for the exercise of free will, no allowance for the varieties of original structure." Here Schiller spent six cheerless and vexatious years, fretting against a system which must have been irksome to all the inmates of this house of bondage, and irksome in a tenfold degree to a youth of his ardent and impetuous, and sensitive and independent temperament. He acquired, however, a sufficient knowledge of his profession, for in 1780 he was appointed by the duke of Würtemburg to the office of surgeon to a regiment. But the whole bent of his inclinations was towards literature, so that it is probable that even his regimental practice was little more than nominal, and that the quaint saying of Jean Paul was about to be fulfilled. "Schiller," said Jean Paul, "was educated for a surgeon; but fate said to him—'No, there are deeper sores than those of the body—heal thou the deeper!' So he became a poet and author." In fact, two years before this time, and while still a schoolboy, he had completed a drama, in which he poured forth the pent-up passions of his life, and which ere long was to burst upon the world like a thunderbolt. This was his celebrated tragedy of "The Robbers." "In that play," says Carlyle, "he wrenched asunder his fetters with a force which was felt at the extremities of Europe;" the sensation it excited spread through the mind of Germany, as Bulwer says, "like fire through flax." Symptoms which portended revolution had already appeared in the political atmosphere of nations; in many quarters a feeling prevailed that society and its institutions had become hollow, conventional, and antiquated. To these symptoms and feelings, "The Robbers" gave a shape and a voice, crude indeed, and exaggerated, but vivid, impassioned, awakening, and sympathetic. The piece was in the highest degree revolutionary; not that it was directly political, but it was a daring defiance of the artificial restraints of civilization—a glowing picture of free and wild life in the woods, led by a gang of young desperadoes who had thrown off the conventions of society, and were determined to live "according to the good old plan, that they should take who have the power, and they should keep who can." In a literary sense also it was highly revolutionary, inasmuch as it was founded on no foreign models, but was a genuine product of native German genius. As such it was hailed with very general acclamation. There can be no doubt that the inspiration of "The Robbers" is to be found in the restrictions by which Schiller was hampered in the Karls-schule at Stuttgart. This work was the rebound of his mind—the form in which his elastic spirit reacted against the cramping influences of the plan. But if this drama gave him fame, it also brought him into serious trouble. Though free from the trammels of school, he was not yet beyond the ducal jurisdiction. His play was published in 1781. It gave great offence to his patron, the duke, as inconsistent both with good taste and with
