Baldovinetti, Alesso
(c. 1426-1499) Italian painter and mosaicist
His work, which was mainly in and around Florence, is documented by his diary recording his commissions. Some of his paintings, such as the Madonna and Child in the Louvre, Paris, and the damaged Nativity fresco in SS. Annunziata, Florence, have attractive, if unsophisticated, landscape views of the Val d’Arno in the background. Among his mosaics are decorations in the baptistery, Florence, and the tympanum over the south door of Pisa cathedral. The main influences visible upon his work are those of domenico veneziano and andrea del castagno.
Baldung Grien, Hans (Hans Baldung Grun)
(1484/85-1545) German painter and print maker While he was still a child, Baldung’s family moved from his native Schwabisch-Gmund to Strasbourg, where he probably received his initial training. By about 1500 he was in durer’s Nuremberg workshop, where he remained until 1508, when he returned to Strasbourg. There he remained for the rest of his career, save for the years 1512-17, when he was based at Fribourg. At Nuremberg, Baldung contributed numerous woodcuts to the books Beschlossen Gart (1505) and Speculum Passionis (1507) by Ulrich Pinder and painted two altarpieces for the city of Halle. The latter’s remarkably lustrous coloristic effects imply knowledge of the early works of cranach. Bal-dung’s key early work is the huge high altar of Fribourg minster. Although related to earlier compositions by Durer, its central panel of the Coronation of the Virgin has a flamboyance of form and color quite distinct from Durer’s disciplined style. Baldung’s woodcuts of the same period, notably the famous Witches (1513), reveal a growing interest in the demonic. This tendency reached a high point of mingled horror and eroticism in the Woman Embraced by Death at Basle, painted in about 1517. With the coming of the Reformation to Strasbourg, Baldung’s subject matter shifts away from religious themes, towards secular ones. These include portraits, such as the woodcut likeness of Luther (1521) and the oil painting of a young man in Nuremberg (1526). Baldung also painted genre scenes, such as the moralizing Ill-Matched Couple (1527) in Liverpool, and classical legends, such as Pyramus and Thisbe (1530) in Berlin. A highly intellectual artist, Bal-dung was far more than merely Durer’s greatest pupil. His style was always quite distinct from that of his master or any other painter, culminating in a highly personal contribution to European mannerism.
Bale, John
(1495-1563) English bishop, controversialist, and dramatist
Born at Cove, Suffolk, Bale was a convert to Protestantism whose uncompromising views provoked great hostility (he was known as "Bilious Bale"). He was twice forced into exile—to Germany in 1540-47 and to Basle during the reign (1553-58) of Mary I. However, Edward VI made him bishop of Ossory (1552) and under Elizabeth I he ended his days in peace as a prebendary of Canterbury. He produced numerous polemical writings, a history of English literature, and several dramas, the most notable of which is King John (1548), often seen as the first English historical play.
Balia
A committee with special powers, set up in an Italian city to handle particular constitutional situations. While overtly a republican institution, the Florentine balia fell inexorably under the control of the medici during the 15th century.
Ballade
A French medieval metrical form, not to be confused with the English "ballad." It consists of a poem of fixed form and strict rhyme scheme with three stanzas of either 10 lines (dizains) or eight lines (huitains) each, the lines being most commonly of six or eight syllables; there is a concluding four-line envoi, in which the poet usually addresses his patron. All four parts end with the same line, constituting the refrain, though departures from the regular forms exist. The greatest exponent of the ballade was Francois Villon (1431-??), who included a number of them in his Testament (1461).
Ballet de cour
A form of entertainment combining dance, spectacle, music, song, and drama, which evolved at the French court in the mid-16th century. catherine de’ medici, who would have encountered similar entertainments at the Florentine court in her youth, laid on the sumptuous Balet comique de la Reine in 1581 to celebrate the marriage of her daughter, and the fashion for hugely expensive and spectacular shows of this nature continued in the reigns of Henry IV (1589-1610) and Louis XIII (1610-43). Costume designs surviving from the early 17th century, especially those by Daniel Rabel (15781637), indicate the grotesque and humorous, as well as the opulent, aspects of these ballets. The ballet de cour had developed into the ballet as we know it by the end of the 17th century.
Bandello, Matteo
(1485-1561) Italian writer, cleric, diplomat, and soldier
Bandello was born at Castelnuovo Scrivia, near Tortona, and educated in Milan and at Pavia university. Among other appointments in Lombardy, he was tutor to Lucrezia gonzaga. After the Spanish attack on Milan following the battle of pavia (1525), in which he lost his house and many documents, he fled to France. In 1550 he was made bishop of Agen, where he spent the rest of his life.
His works include a collection of Petrarchan verse (Il Canzoniere, 1544) and an Italian version of Euripides’ Hecuba, but it was his prose Novelle (1554, 1573) containing 214 stories, which made him famous and initiated a new phase in narrative literature. Bandello did not aim at classical dignity in his writing, but he did help promote the vernacular as the literary language of Italy. Containing a extraordinary variety of tales, the collection was also an important source for later Renaissance playwrights who drew on it either directly or in translation (shakespeare, for instance, utilized Bandello’s "Giulietta e Romeo").
Bandinelli, Baccio (Bartolommeo Bandinelli)
(14881560) Italian sculptor in marble and bronze He was born in Florence and after training under his goldsmith father, worked with rustici, the sculptural associate of leonardo da vinci. His career was dedicated to trying in vain to equal the sculpture of michelangelo, in a series of commissions from the medici family, both in Florence and Rome; many of these remained unfinished. Much of his original monumental statuary can be criticized: for example, the Hercules and Cacus (1534; Piazza della Signo-ria, Florence), which he pretentiously carved as a pair of Michelangelo’s David. His best work is either closely based on classical statuary, like the Laocoon in the Uffizi, Florence (1525), or is in low relief, like the Prophets in the choir of Florence cathedral (1555). As court sculptor to Duke Cosimo I, he was a rival of cellini, who attacked him in his autobiography. He also produced portraits, bronze statuettes, paintings, and drawings, most of which are still in Florence.
Banking
Renaissance banking was basically the same as medieval banking, with a few great houses offering merchant banking services (particularly long-distance money transfer and the provision of loans). The first such organization was that of the knights templar, who by 1200 were in effect bankers to the kings of England and France. The 13th century saw the rise of the great Italian houses— the acciaiuoli, bardi, and Peruzzi of Florence, the Fres-cobaldi of Lucca, and others—who used the capital amassed in trade to move into banking. With kings always short of cash for major enterprises, especially wars, these bankers quickly became immensely wealthy and influential. However, this had its risks: the default of Edward III of England (1341) bankrupted the Peruzzi (1343), Ac-ciaiuoli (1345), and Bardi (1346). Later bankers, such as the medici and Spinelli, adopted a more decentralized organization, so the failure of one branch could not ruin the whole company, and in general took fewer risks.
Italian dominance continued until the end of the 15th century, when economic and political changes shifted the focus northwards. After 1494, when Charles VIII of France captured Florence, the Medici bank ceased to function. The great bankers of the 16th century were the fug-ger family of Augsburg, who had built their fortune in the silver and copper mines of Slovakia, the Welsers, also of Augsburg, and the Hochstetters. The commercial and financial capital of Europe was then Antwerp. However, the opening up of the world beyond Europe occasioned further changes; by the early 17th century the lead had passed to the Dutch, backed by the wealth from their East Indian empire.
Baccio Bandinelli Hercules and Cacus (1534). The sculpture records the exploit of Hercules in which he killed the giant Cacus, who had stolen some of the hero’s cattle. It stands in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence. The Bridgeman Art Library
What distinguished these firms were their international connections and the scale of their operations. Almost anybody with capital could, and did, lend money. For example, the English kings of the late 14th and early 15th centuries preferred to deal with syndicates of English merchants rather than the Italian houses. At a lower level, money-lenders and pawnbrokers abounded. The taking of interest—usury—was technically against canon law, but was generally practiced, especially by the jews upon whom, of course, canon law was not binding.
In the late 16th century there began to emerge a major change in banking: the provision of capital for loans by accepting deposits, on which interest was paid. This led to the establishment of firms that concentrated solely on banking, without a base in trade, commerce, or other industry. Such a "public bank," the Banco della Piazza di Ri-alto, was established in Venice in 1587, and in 1609 the Dutch launched the great Bank of Amsterdam.
Barbari, Jacopo de’
(c. 1450-c. 1515) Italian painter and engraver
Barbari was a native of Venice and may have met durer on the latter’s visit to Italy in 1495, but little is known of his early career. He produced a grand woodcut panorama of Venice in 12 sheets, and the same year (1500) he moved to Nuremberg as painter to Emperor Maximilian I. During his peripatetic career in northern Europe he was immensely important in propagating Italian Renaissance motifs and style among northern artists. After a period (1503-05) serving Frederick (III) the Wise of Saxony, he moved to the Netherlands (c. 1508), working first for Philip of Burgundy and later for the Hapsburg regent Margaret of Austria. His still life of a dead bird (1504; Munich) is a very early example of the genre. Among the artists who were deeply influenced by him were Jan gossaert and Bernard van orley.
Barbaro, Daniele
(1513-1570) Italian nobleman and polymath
Barbaro belonged to a landed Venetian family and studied science, philosophy, mathematics, and literature in Padua. In 1545 he founded and became curator of the botanic garden there. In 1548 he was sent to England as ambassador and on his return (1550) was appointed patriarch of Aquileia, in which role he attended the Council of trent. He commissioned the Villa Barbaro (1560-68) at Maser from palladio, who had earlier provided the illustrations to Barbaro’s edition of vitruvius (1556), and engaged veronese to decorate the interior. Barbaro’s Pratica della perspettiva (1568/69), giving an interesting account of the camera obscura, has some illustrative material borrowed from the 1566 edition of serlio’s architectural treatise; the fact that this edition had been dedicated to Barbaro is still further evidence of his informed patronage.
Barbaro, Ermolao (Almoro di Zaccaria)
(1453-c. 1493) Italian poet and scholar
He was born at Venice and studied at Rome under Pom-ponio leto, was crowned laureate at 14, and appointed professor of philosophy at Padua in 1477. There he corresponded with politian and pico della mirandola and lectured on Aristotle. He went on a number of diplomatic missions for the city and was made patriarch of Aquileia by Pope Innocent VIII (1491). Unfortunately he failed to obtain the permission of the Venetian senate for this post and he was banished to Rome, where he died, probably of plague. His major scholarly activity was textual criticism (his Castigationes Pliniae (1492) emended over 5000 passages in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History). He also edited Pomponius Mela (1493) and translated Themistius’s Greek commentary on Aristotle (1480). His translation of Aristotle’s Rhetorica into Latin was not printed until 1544.
Barbarossa (Italian, "Redbeard," Khair ed-Din)
(c. 14651546) Barbary pirate and admiral of the Ottoman fleet Raised on Lesbos, he moved to Djerba with his three brothers when their father died. Scorning both the weakness of the Muslim rulers and the presence of Iberian invaders in North Africa, the brothers undertook a campaign of brutal piracy. They formed a principality on Djidjelli, but Spain captured their land in 1518. Bar-barossa, now the head of the family, was saved from annihilation by the sultan of Turkey, and for the rest of his life he worked for the sultan. He conquered Tunis for the Ottomans (1534) and permanently loosened Spain’s grip on North Africa.
Bardi, Count Giovanni de’
(1534-1612) Italian composer and writer
Bardi was the founder of the Florentine Camerata, a group of scholars who sought to rediscover the music and drama of ancient Greece. They believed that the Greek tragedies were recited to a musical accompaniment and their attempts to recreate these conditions resulted in the first operas. Notable members of the Camerata included the poet Ottavio Rinuccini, Giulio caccini, Vincenzo galilei, the father of Galileo, and, probably, Jacopo peri. Bardi’s Dis-corso mandato a Caccini sopra la musica antica (Discourse to Caccini on ancient music; 1580) is a theoretical work advocating the abandonment of counterpoint in favor of a monodic form, a single vocal line with only light accompaniment. His only surviving musical compositions, ironically, are two highly contrapuntal madrigals.
Bardi family
The Florentine family of Bardi won a large fortune and European influence through international banking. By 1310 they were the wealthiest family in Florence and used their position to secure political dominance. However, as part of Edward III of England’s manoeuvres to finance the Hundred Years’ War, they participated from 1338 in schemes to exploit the English wool trade though monopolistic syndicates, intended to repay the large loans they made to the king. These did not work, and Edward defaulted on his repayments (1341); by 1345 the Bardi were owed at least £103,000. This, combined with the burden of supporting Florence’s war against Lucca, forced them into bankruptcy (1346), and they also lost their political power. The sole surviving evidence of the Bardi fortune can be seen in their gifts to the church of Sta. Croce, Florence. Count Giovanni bardi was an intellectual leader in late 16th-century Florence, the patron of musicians, scholars, and poets, as well as being a composer himself.
Barends, Dirk
(1534-1592) Netherlands painter He was born in Amsterdam and around 1555 traveled to Venice where he worked in the studio of titian. Back in Amsterdam by 1562, he became known as a portrait painter and one of the earliest to produce a group portrait (schuttersstuk) of the kind made famous in the 17th century by such masterpieces as Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. His style is characteristic of the mannerism prevalent in the northern Netherlands during this period.
Barents, Willem
(died 1597) Dutch navigator, after whom the Barents Sea was named
Barents pioneered the northeast passage to Asia. In 1594 his first attempt to find a route was defeated by the harsh climate of Novaya Zemlya, where he was following the western coastline. The following year a seven-ship convoy attempted to penetrate the strait between Vaigach Island and the continental coast. His third expedition, under Jakob van Heemskerck (died 1607), discovered Spitzber-gen, but was aborted during the winter of 1596/97, when ice trapped their ship north of Novaya Zemlya, and the crew became the first Europeans to winter so far north.
They only escaped in two home-built open boats in June 1597. Barents died later that month, en route for the Kola Peninsula where most of his shipmates eventually reached safety.
Baro, Peter
(1534-1599) French divine Baro was born at Etampes and admitted to the ministry by John Calvin himself at Geneva in 1560. He fled persecution in France a year later and settled in England. Here, under the patronage of William Cecil, Lord Burghley, he was appointed to a chair of divinity at Cambridge (1574). By 1581 his increasing toleration of the tenets of Rome was apparent and he aroused considerable hostility, including that of Elizabeth I. He left Cambridge in 1596 and passed his remaining years in London. Baro was the first divine in England to interpret the creed of the Church of England upon definite anti-Calvinistic principles and so anticipated the work of Richard Bancroft and William Laud in the next century.
Barocci, Federico (Il Baroccio)
(c. 1535-1612) Italian painter
Born and trained in Urbino, Barocci was also known as Fiori da Urbino and became celebrated for his innovative emotional style strongly influenced by the works of cor-reggio. He visited Rome twice (1550, 1560) to study Raphael’s works and was probably encouraged there by Michelangelo. On his second visit he worked with Fed-erico zuccaro on the decoration of the ceiling of the Casino of Pius IV in the Vatican gardens (1561-63), which established his reputation as a leading Italian artist. Barocci spent the rest of his career in Urbino, where he enjoyed ducal patronage; he painted mainly religious subjects, aspects of which anticipated the baroque. Later works included the Madonna del Popolo (1575-79; Uffizi, Florence), the Vision of St. Sebastian (1595; Genoa cathedral), the Nativity (1597; Prado, Madrid), and a number of sensitive drawings. He was also a pioneer of the use of pastel chalks and often employed mannerist devices in his compositions.
Baronius, Cesare (Cesare Baronio)
(1538-1607) Italian historian of the Roman Catholic Church
Baronius was born at Sora, educated at Naples, joined the Oratory in Rome in 1557, and eventually (1593) succeeded St. philip neri as its head. He became confessor to Pope clement viii, who made him a cardinal and librarian of the Vatican. He is best remembered for his 12-volume Annales ecclesiastici (1588-1607), a justification of his faith by the history of the Church to 1199 ce, designed to counter the claims of the Lutheran centuriators of magdeburg. Although poorly arranged, dull, and inaccurate, this work has long been praised as a pioneering accumulation of historical sources drawn from the Vatican and leading Italian libraries. Baronius’s support, on the basis of his studies, for the papal claim to Sicily against that of Spain reputedly lost him the papacy, due to Spanish opposition. He also revised and corrected the Roman Martyrology (1586, 1589).
Baroque
A movement in the arts that began in Rome at the end of the Renaissance and later spread throughout Europe and the colonies. Possibly deriving its name from the Spanish word barrueco (meaning an irregularly shaped pearl) and used at first as a term of abuse, the Baroque prospered chiefly in Roman Catholic countries, where it was employed as a medium for propaganda during the counter-reformation and reached its climax in the mid-17th century (the High Baroque). The Baroque saw a new emphasis upon naturalism and emotionalism and a new boldness in combining different art forms to achieve a complete balanced work of art. In architecture and sculpture, the principal exponent of the style was Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), who invested his works with a sense of movement and emotional urgency, encouraging the spread of such ideas during his travels around Europe. Other notable architects active mainly in Rome included Francesco Castelli Borromini (1599-1667).
The artists of the Baroque inherited an interest in the classical tradition via mannerism and were deeply influenced by such masters as Michelangelo, Titian, and Raphael. Among the early exponents were caravaggio, whose command of such techniques as chiaroscuro contributed to the revolutionary atmosphere of realism and emotional seriousness; Annibale carracci, who broke new ground in rejecting some of the excesses of the mannerists; Pietro da Cortona (1596-1669), who specialized in overwhelming illusionistic ceilings (for example, those in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence); and later rubens, who became acquainted with the Baroque in Rome between 1600 and 1608, before establishing himself as the greatest of the northern Baroque artists.
The movement outside Italy subsequently produced a number of other important artists and architects, who combined Italian ideals with their own national characteristics, notably Jan Vermeer and Rembrandt in the Netherlands, Velazquez in Spain, Balthasar Neumann in Germany, Nicolas Poussin in France, and van Dyck, Inigo jones, Christopher Wren, and Sir John Vanbrugh in England. The baroque taste for ornate decoration ultimately achieved an extreme form in the highly decorated rococo style of the early 18th century.
In music, the term Baroque is used to denote a period (approximately 1600-1750) rather than a particular style or movement; the term therefore covers developments in European music from the time of monteverdi to that of J. S. Bach and Handel over a century later. The music of the Baroque is most clearly distinguished from that of the late Renaissance in its use of basso continuo and its introduction of major and minor tonality in place of the earlier system of modes. However, the period’s emphasis on emotional affect and the expressive setting of texts is continuous with trends in the music of the late Renaissance. Major forms to emerge during the period include opera, oratorio, and the instrumental concerto.
Barros, Joao de
(1496-1570) Portuguese historian and administrator
Barros was born at Vizeu and brought up at the court of King Manuel I of Portugal, where he was a favorite of the king and also of Prince John, later King John III. In 1532 he was appointed head of the overseas administration, dealing with Portuguese trade with the East and colonial expansionism. Barros’s own venture in colonialism, his 1539 expedition to Brazil, was a disaster and he suffered severe financial loss when his fleet was shipwrecked.
A chivalric romance, the Cronica do Emperador Clarimundo (1522), was his first published work. Later works include the humanist dialogue Ropica pnefma (1532) and one of the earliest Portuguese grammars (1539), but his crowning achievement is his history of Portuguese ventures in the East. This work, the Asia, appeared in four "Decadas" (1552, 1553, 1563, 1615); it was continued after his death by Diogo do couto. Barros, who modeled his style on that of the Roman historian Livy, celebrated his country’s overseas discoveries and conquests from the vantage-point of his own position in the colonial administration; the Asia is still a valuable record of the great years of Portuguese expansionism.
