About 1542 he returned to Italy, and at Bologna erected the bank, the Isolani palace and other private mansions, and constructed the Navilio canal to bring water to the city from a distance of three miles. Disgusted with what he considered the inadequate payment he received for this last work, he in 1550 repaired to Rome, where, through the good offices of Vasari, he was employed by the pope, Julius III., on various architectural and engineering works; that which has conduced most to his fame being the elegant private villa of the pope near the Flaminian gate. After the death of the pope (1555) Vignola found a munificent patron in the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, for whom among other things he executed his chief work, the Caprarola palace—a structure in the form of a pentagon, each side 130 feet long, inclosing a circular court 65 feet in diameter. The rooms were splendidly decorated with frescoes by Taddeo Zucchero. Besides these and many other elegant buildings in Rome and its vicinity, Vignola erected churches at Perugia, Assisi, and elsewhere, and made the designs for the ducal palace at Piacenza. When Philip II. of Spain proposed to erect the Escurial, he consulted Vignola, and wished to engage his services; but the architect declined the offer on the plea of advanced years. Vignola was appointed architect of St. Peter's on the death of Michelangelo, 1564. He died at Rome on 7th July, 1573. Vignola exercised considerable influence on architecture by his buildings, but much more by his writings. His treatise on the five orders, "Regola delli cinque ordini d'Architettura," is termed by Milizia the Alphabet of Architects. Numberless editions of it have been published in the different Italian capitals from the original by Vignola down to that of G. Villardi, folio, Milan, 1854; it has been translated into most languages, and universally referred to as a standard authority. With the writings of his contemporary, Palladio, it served to define the proportions and to fix the applications of the orders, and in so doing, there can be little doubt, to cramp the invention of architects, and check the development of the art. Another work of Vignola's, on perspective, "Le duc Regole della Prospettivo practica," was published with a commentary by P. E. Danti, and a memoir of Vignola, folio, Rome, in 1583: an edition in 8vo, by L. della Volpe, appeared as late as 1830 at Milan. Vignola's principal designs are engraved in the "Œuvres Completes de J. B. de Vignola," edited by Lebas and Debret, folio, Paris, 1823, &c. The villa of Pope Julius was illustrated in a handsome folio volume by the architect Stern in 1788.—J. T—e.
VIGNOLI, Giovanni, an eminent Italian antiquarian and numismatist, was born at Petigliano, a town of Tuscany, in 1689. Having entered the church, he was in 1720 appointed librarian at the Vatican, an office which he held till his death in 1753. He was author of a number of very learned antiquarian works—"Dissertatio de Columna Imperatoris Antonini Pii, unà cum antiquis inscriptionibus," Rome, 1705; "Antiquiores Pontificum Denarii," Rome, 1709, &c., &c.—R. M., A.
VIGNOLI, Maria Portia, a learned and accomplished Italian lady, was born at Viterbo in 1632. She was endowed by nature with every grace that adorns the female form, and was no less distinguished for her rare intellectual gifts. Her memory was such that she could repeat a whole book almost verbatim, after reading it a second time. She composed with great ease and precision both in Latin and in her native tongue, and was a proficient in arithmetic and astronomy. But poetry was her favourite pursuit. This charming woman, whose piety and modesty were not less remarkable than her physical and mental endowments, entered a convent at her native town in 1658, and took the veil in the following year. She was still living in 1692, but the year of her death is not known. The following of her works have been printed—"Sonetti Eroici e Lugubri;" "L'Obelisco di Piazza Navona, idillio;" "Il Genethliaco del principe primogenito del Rè di Polonia;" "Il vaticinio della Sibilla Tiburtina;" "Il Zebro festivo, idillio;" "Roma trionfante, canzone;" "Talia Mascherata," &c.—R. M., A.
VIGNY, Alfred-Victor, Count, a French novelist and poet, was born at Loches on the 27th of March, 1799. He was sent to a school at Paris, but removed thence by his mother, who was alarmed at the warlike ardour he caught from his schoolfellows. A home education did not wean him from military aspirations, and at the age of sixteen he was placed in the regiment of musketeers of Louis XVIII. He accompanied the king to Ghent during the Hundred Days. In 1823 he entered the line in order to be able to accompany the French expedition to Spain. His regiment, however, was detained in the Pyrenees, and the time he had hoped to give to action he passed in writing poetry. At length in 1828 he quitted the army, and devoted himself entirely to literature. Already, in 1815 and 1822 respectively, he had published two volumes of poems, which were inspired by his classical and biblical studies. In 1826 appeared his celebrated novel entitled "Cinq Mars," which passed through four editions in three years. The success of this romantic illustration of the times of Richelieu encouraged the author to produce in 1832 "Stello, or the blue devils," and "Military Servitude and Greatness" in 1835, the materials of which he derived from the history of the republic and the empire. As a dramatic writer Count Vigny achieved considerable success by his "Chatterton," an episode taken from "Stello." The question of the morality of scenic representations of suicide was mooted in the chamber of deputies in connection with this play. In 1845 he became a member of the Institute. Although devoted to poetry as a study, he of late years published but little. He died in September, 1863.—R. H.
VIGO, Giovanni de, a celebrated Italian surgeon, was born at Genoa in the latter part of the fifteenth century. He went to Rome in 1503 on the invitation of Pope Julius II., who appointed him his private physician. Vigo practised with much success in the capital, and added greatly to his reputation by the publication of his "Practica in arte chirurgicâ copiosa, continens novem libros," Rome, 1514—a laborious compilation which was immediately translated into most of the European languages, and is still of very considerable use to all who are interested in the history of medicine, though the directions and information contained in it are no longer of any practical value. Vigo published another work in 1518 entitled "De Morbo Gallico." The year of his death is not known.—R. M., A.
VIGORS, Nicholas Aylward, a distinguished naturalist, was born at Old Leighlin, county Carlow, in 1787. He was educated at Trinity college, Oxford, where he acquired reputation for his classical and literary attainments. After leaving Oxford he obtained an ensigncy in the Grenadier Guards, and was present at the battle of Barossa in 1811. He was severely wounded in that action, and on returning to England left the service and devoted himself to natural history, especially the study of birds and insects. On the death of his father he succeeded to the family estate, and he represented the borough or county of Carlow in parliament from the year 1832 to the time of his death, which took place on October 26, 1840. Vigors' contributions to zoology are contained in the Transactions of the Linnæan and Zoological Societies, and in the Zoological Journal. His best known papers are—"On the Natural Affinities that connect the Orders and Families of Birds," and on "The Arrangement of the Genera of Birds." In his classification he adopts the circular or quinary system proposed by Macleay in his Horæ Entomologicæ. He was one of the first members of the Zoological Club of the Linnæan Society, from which the Zoological Society took its rise. To their museum he presented his extensive collection. He published in 1810 a work on "The Nature and Extent of Poetic License."—F. C. W.
VILLALOBOS, Francisco de, a Spanish poet and physician belonging to a family which had for several successive generations been devoted to the medical art, was born at Toledo about the year 1480. He began his literary career at a time when imitation of the classical models had become common among his countrymen. His first work, a poem on his own science in five hundred stanzas, founded on the rules of Avicenna, was published as early as 1498. He subsequently became the physician first of Ferdinand the Catholic, and afterwards of Charles II., and continued to be known as an author, chiefly on subjects connected with his profession, till 1543, when he retired, poor and disheartened, from the court into private life. He died about the year 1560. One of his works was a translation of the Amphitryon of Plautus into terse Spanish prose. A collected edition of his writings was published at Saragossa in 1544, with a dedication by the author to the Infante Don Luis of Portugal.—R. M., A.
VILLALPANDI, John Baptist, a learned Spaniard, was born at Cordova in 1552. After studying at Alcala, at the age of twenty-six he joined the Society of Jesus. He excelled in mathematics, and especially in the application of them to architecture. His tastes and studies were brought out in a commentary on Ezekiel, which he elaborated along with Prado, a kindred spirit. The work was undertaken by command of Philip II. Believing the temple to have been a perfect structure,
