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</noinclude><section begin="s1"/>FRANCESCHILJEAN BAPTISTE, BARON (1766-1813), French
genera1, , was born at Bastia on the 5th of December 2766 and
entered the French service in 179 3., He took part in the operations
in Corsica in the following year, and received a wound at
the siege of San Fiorenzo. After this he left the island and was
appointed a field officer in the French Army of Italy, with which
he served from 1795 to 1799. He served as a general officer in
the campaign of Marengo, in the Naples campaign of 1805-1806,
and in the Peninsular War from 1807 to 1809. He was created
a baron by Napoleon. He commanded a. Neapolitan brigade
in the Russian War of 1812, and after the retreat from Moscow
took refuge, with the remnant of his command, in Danzig,
where in the course of the siege of 1813 he died on the 19th..of
March., ,-
Two other generals of brigade in Napoleonis wars borethe
name of Franceschi, and therthree have often been mistaken for
each other. The first was born at Lyons, JEAN BAPTISTE MARIE
FRANCESCHI-DELONNE (1767-1810), who served throughout
the Revolutionary campaign on the Rhine, took part in the
campaign of Zürich in 1799, and distinguished himself very
greatly by his escape from, and subsequent return to, Genoa,
when in 1800 Masséna was closely besieged in that ~city. He
became a cavalry colonel in 1803, was promoted general of
brigade on the field of .Austerlitz, . and served in southern Italy
and in Spain on the stan' of King Joseph Bonaparte. During
the Peninsular War he won great distinction as a cavalry general,
and in 1810 Napoleon made him abaron. At this time he was a
prisoner in the hands of the Spaniards, into whose hands he had
fallen while bearing important dispatches during the campaign
of Talavera. He was harshly treated by his captors, and died
at Carthagena on the 23rd of October 1810. The second, was
Fimngors FRANCESCHI-LOSIO (1770-1810), born at Milan, who
entered the French Revolutionary army in 1795. He» served
through the Italian campaign of 'I7 Q6-97, and subsequently,
like F ranceschi-Delonne, with Masséna at Zurich and at Genoa,
and at the headquarters of King Joseph in Italy and Spain.
He was killed in a duel by the Neapolitan colonel Filangieri
in 1810. ~- ~ . .
<section end="s1"/>
<section begin="s2"/>FRANCESCHI, PIERO (or PIETRO) DE' 1 (c. ' 1416-1492),
Italian painter of the Umbrian school. This master is generally
named Piero della Francesca (Peter, son of Frances), the tradition
being that his father, a woollen-draper named Benedetto, had
died before his birth. This is not gcorrect, for., the mother's
name was Romana, and the father continued living during
many years of Piero', s career. The painter is also named Piero
Borghese, from his birthplace, Borgo San Sepolcro, in Umbria.
The true family name was, as above stated, F ranceschi, and
the family still exists under the name of Martini-Franceschi.
Piero, first received a scientific education, and became an
adept in mathematics and geometry. This early bent of mind
and course of study influenced to a large extent his development
as a painter. He had more science than either Paolo Uccello
or Mantegna, both .of them his contemporaries, the former
older and the latter younger. Skilful in linear perspective,
he fixed rectangular planes in perfect order and measured them,
and thus got his hgures in true proportional height. He preceded
and, excelled Domenico Ghirlandajo in projecting shadows,
and rendered with considerable truth atmosphere, the harmony
of colours, and the relief of objects. He was naturally therefore
excellent in architectural painting, and, in point of technique,
he advanced the practice of oil-colouring in Italy.-The
earliest trace that we find of Piero as a painter is in 1439,
when he was an apprentice of Domenico V eneziano, and assisted
him in painting the chapel of S. Egidio, in S. Maria, Novella of
Florence. Towards 1450 he is said to have been with the same
artist in Loreto; nothing of his, however, can now be identified
in that locality. In 1451 he was by himself, painting in Rimini,
where a fresco still remains. Prior to this he had executed
some extensive frescoes in the Vatican; but these were destroyed
when Raphael undertook on the same walls the “ Liberation
of St Peter ” and other paintings. His most extensive extant
series of frescoes is in the choir of S. Francesco in Arezzo, -the
“History of: the Cross, ” beginning with legendary subjects of
the death and burial of Adam, and going on to the entry of
Heraclius into Jerusalem after the overthrow of Chosroes.
This series is, in relation to its period, remarkable for effect,
movement, and mastery of the nude. The subject of the “ Vision
of Constantine ” is particularly vigorous in chiaroscuro; and a
preparatory design of the same composition was so highly effective
that it used to be ascribed to Giorgione, and might even (according
to one authority) have passed for the handiwork of Correggio
or of Rembrandt. A noted frescoin Borgo San, Sepolcro, the
“ Resurrection, ” may be later than this series; it is preserved
in the Palazzo de' Conservatori. An important painting of the
“ Flagellation of Christ, ” in the cathedral of Urbino, is later
still, probably towards 147O.' Piero appears to have been much
in his native town of Borgo San Sepolcro from about 1445, and
more especially after 1454, when he finished the series in Arezzo.
He grew rich there, and there he died, and in October I4Q2 was
buried. . .
Two statements made by Vasari regarding "Piero della Francesca"
are open to much controversy. He says that Piero became blind
at the age of sixty, which cannot be true, as he continued painting
some years later; but scepticism need perhaps hardly go to the
extent of inferring that he was never blind at all. Vasari also says
that Fra Luca Pacioli, a disciple of Piefoiin scientific matters,
defrauded his memory by appropriating his researches without
acknowledgment. This is hard upon the friar, who constantly
reverence for his master in the sciences. One of
shows a great V,
Pacioli's books was published in I 509, and speaks of Piero as still
it has been propounded that Piero lived to the
living. ' Hence
patriarchal age of ninety-four or upwards; but, as it is now stated
that he was buried in 1492, we must infer that there is some 'mistake
in relation to Pacioli's remark- rhaps the date ~of. writing was
several years earlier than that olpe publication. Piero was known
to have left a manuscript of, his own on perspective; this remained
undiscovered for a long time, but eventually was found by E. Harzen
in the Ambrosian .library of Milan, ascribed to some supposititious
“ Pietro, Pittore di Bruges.” The treatise shows a knowledge of
perspective as dependent on the oint of distance.
In the National Gallery, Londron, are three paintings attributed
to Piero de' F ranceschir Another work, a profile of Isotta da Rimini,
may safely be rejected. The “ Baptismof Christ, ” which used to be
the altar-piece of the Priory of the Baptist in Borgo San Sepolcro,
is an important example; and still more so the “ Nativity, ” with the
Virgin neeling, and five angels 'singing to musical instruments.
This is a very interesting and characteristic specimen, and has
indeed been praised somewhat beyond its deservings on aesthetic
grounds., ,
Piero's earlier style was ener etic but unrefined, and to the last
he lacked selectness of form and' feature. The types of his visages
are peculiar, and the costumes (as especially in the Arezzo series)
Singular. He used to work assiduously from clay models swathed
in real drapery. Luca Signorelli was his pupil, and probably to
some extent Perugino; and his own influence, furthered by that of
Signorelli, was potent over all Italy. Belonging as he does to the
Umbrian school, he united with thatlstyle something of the Sienese
and more of the Florentine mode.
Besides Vasari and Crowe & Cavalcaselle, the work by W. G.
Waters, Piero delia Francesca (1899) should be consulted.
(W. M. R.)
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<section begin="s3"/>FRANCESCHINI, BALDASSARE (161 I-1689), Italian painter
of the Tuscan school, named, from Volterra the place of his
birth, Il Volterrano, or (to distinguish him from Ricciarelli)
Il Volterrano Giuniore, was the son, of a sculptor in alabaster;
At a very early age he learned from. Cosi1jno-Daddi some of the
elements of art, and he started as an assistant to his father.
This employment being evidently below the level of his talents,
the marquises I nghirami placed him, at the age of sixteen, under
thelflorentine painter Matteo Rosselli., In the ensuing year he
had' advanced sufficiently to execute in Volterra some frescoes.
skilful in foreshortening, , followed by other frescoes for the
Medici family in the Valle della Petraia. In 16 S2 the marchese
Filippo Niccolini, being minded to employ F ranceschini upon the
frescoes for the cupola and back-wall of his chapel in'S. Croce,
Florence, despatchedhirn to various parts of Italy to perfect
his style. The painter, in a tour which lasted some months,
took more especially to the qualities .distinctive of the schools
of Parma andlBologna, and in a measure to those of Pietro
da Cortona, whose acquaintance he made in Rome. He then
undertook the paintings commissioned by Niccolini, which<section end="s3"/><noinclude>{{Reflist}}{{Div col end}}</div></noinclude>