Poggini, Domenico
(1520-1590) Italian sculptor, medalist, and goldsmith
Poggini was born in Florence and worked mainly there until he moved to the court of Pope Sixtus V in Rome in 1585. From the 1550s he produced an interesting series of medals. As a sculptor he was more successful in bronze than in marble. His elder brother Gianpaolo (1518-c. 1582) was also a medalist who worked for Philip II in Brussels and from 1559 in Madrid.
Pole, Cardinal Reginald
(1500-1558) English Catholic churchman
Pole was the grandnephew of King Edward IV He was educated at Oxford and spent some time in Italy from 1521. After challenging henry vlll’s assumption of supremacy over the English Church he was forced into exile (1532), and his rebuke to the king, Pro ecclesiasticae unitatis de-fensione, was presented to Henry in 1536, causing deep offense. Pole’s home at Viterbo became a center for Catholic reformers, and his saintly character and hostility to the English Reformation earned him a cardinal’s hat in 1536. The infuriated Henry attainted his family (1539) and executed his mother (1541). Pole returned to England as papal legate (1554) and was mary i’s close adviser during the Catholic reaction. He became the last Roman Catholic archbishop of Canterbury in 1556, but clashed with Pope paul iv, who deprived Pole of his authority on suspicion of heresy. Pole died just 12 hours after Mary I.
Polidoro Caldara da Caravaggio
(c. 1500-1543) Italian painter
A pupil of raphael, he spent the early part of his career in Rome, where he became famous for the masterly monochrome imitations of classical reliefs with which he decorated house facades. He also worked as an assistant on decorative works in the Vatican. He was one of the earliest classical landscape painters, and works such as his fresco in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale anticipate the paintings of Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin. Following the Sack of Rome (1527), Polidoro worked in Naples and in Messina, where he was murdered.
Politian (Angelo Ambrogini)
(1454-1494) Italian humanist scholar and poet
Politian (or Poliziano) took his adopted name from his birthplace of Montepulciano. Entering the university of Florence at age 10, he was taught Latin by Cristoforo landino, Greek by John argyropoulos, and philosophy by Marsilio ficino. Lorenzo de’ Medici appointed him tutor (1475) to his sons Piero and Giovanni. In 1480, after a brief sojourn in Mantua, he became professor of Greek and Latin at Florence and won a Europe-wide reputation. He translated the Iliad into Latin hexameters, lectured on Hellenistic Greek writers, and produced material for an edition of the Pandects of Justinian which is still of critical value. His prologues to his lectures were elegant poems in Latin hexameters, published under the title Silvae, and he even composed Greek epigrams. Unusually for a classicist, he was also a very competent writer in the vernacular: his pastoral drama, Orfeo, was produced at Mantua in 1480, and he published a collection of Tuscan ballads and songs entitled Rime. His Stanze per la giostra del Magnifico Giu-liano, begun in 1475 but never finished, commemorates the victory of Giuliano de’ Medici (died 1478) in a tournament and Giuliano’s love for Simonetta Vespucci (died 1476).
Politian was the first Western scholar who could compete with the Greek immigrants in knowledge of the ancient language. Evidence for Politian’s scholarship comes from the books in his own library which were extensively annotated with readings from his collations of manuscripts. He also seems to have invented the method of designating manuscripts by an individual letter (siglum) which made for easy reference. His major scholarly publication was his Miscellanea (1489) in which he offered critical comments on a wide range of Greek and Latin texts. As a teacher his influence was very great; his pupils included Johann reuchlin, Thomas linacre, and William grocyn. His private life was marred by scandal and his personal reputation at his death was dubious.
Pollaiuolo, Antonio del
(1432-1498) Italian painter, sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith
With his brother, Piero (c. 1441-96), he ran one of the most successful, innovative, and influential workshops in their native Florence. It is usually assumed that their better paintings were executed mainly or wholly by Antonio because they reveal a mastery of the human form which can only be matched by the bronze works of Antonio and not in works known to have been done by Piero alone. Influences visible in Antonio’s work include donatello, mantegna, and andrea del castagno, under whom Antonio’s brother may have studied. But the most important factor that shaped Antonio’s work was his analysis of the human form. He was one of the first scientific artists who practiced dissection in order to understand muscular structure, as leonardo da vinci was to do later. Hisdrawings and engravings such as Battle of the Nude Men (c. 1470) exemplify the link between art and research into nature that was to be such a feature of Leonardo’s work. In this engraving and in Pollaiuolo’s masterpiece, the Martyrdom of St. Sebastian (1475; National Gallery, London), the figures have clearly defined muscular structures and the pictures are composed to show poses from a variety of angles.
Pollaiuolo’s second main innovation was the introduction of landscape interest to Florentine art through paintings such as Hercules and Nessus (Yale Art Gallery, New Haven), which set the figures in a lyrical landscape. His most important sculptures were carried out with Piero in St. Peter’s in the 1490s. They are the bronze tombs of Sixtus IV (1493) and of Innocent VIII (c. 1495). The latter included the first sepulchral effigy to depict the living man, and features of both tombs were widely copied.
Polybius
(c. 202-120 bce) Greek historian Polybius had a distinguished career in Greek public life, was the friend of the great Roman general Scipio Aemil-ianus, and after 146 bce organized the Roman administration in Greece. His wide military and diplomatic experience made him exceptionally well qualified to observe and discuss the causes of Rome’s rise and the decadence of the Greek cities. Much of his narrative and viewpoint in the first five books of his History (all that survive intact out of the original 40) was exceptionally interesting to Renaissance students of statecraft, warfare, and the role of the individual in history. Fragments of the sixth book survive in excerpts, including a passage on the Roman constitution that appears to have influenced machiavelli. A Latin translation, made in 1452-53 for Pope Nicholas V, was printed in 1473, and the editio prin-ceps appeared in 1530.
Pomponazzi, Pietro
(1462-1525) Italian physician and philosopher
Pomponazzi was born at Mantua. After medical studies at Padua (1487) he was appointed professor of philosophy there and lectured on Aristotle’s Physics until 1509, when the closure of the Paduan schools sent him to Ferrara. There he began the studies in Aristotelian psychology which were to lead him to develop heretical views concerning the nature of the soul. In 1512 he went to Bologna as professor of natural and moral philosophy, a post which he held until his death. In 1516 he published De immor-talitate animae, a treatise on the immortality of the soul that generated much opposition, as it conflicted with both the accepted (Thomist and Averroist) views on Aristotle.
Pomponazzi tried to separate his speculations from his own personal belief and made a formal submission to the Church on matters of faith, but it required the intervention of Cardinal bembo with Pope Leo X to save him from suffering as a heretic.
Ponce de Leon, Juan
(1474-1521) Spanish explorer, conquistador, and administrator
Having fought against the Moors of Granada, he volunteered for columbus’s 1493 West Indian voyage. In 1502 he joined another West Indies expedition and in 1506 led the subjugation of present-day Puerto Rico. Following a spell as a colonial governor (1509-12), he sailed in search of the mythical island of Bimini with its Fountain of Youth, and in March 1513 made landfall in the land he named Florida. His ship’s log of this voyage (now lost) was used by the historian Antonio de Herrera (1559-1625) in his Historia general de los hechos de los castellanos en las islas i tierra firme del Mar Oceano (1601-15). After five years (1515-20) in Puerto Rico, he sailed again for Florida but suffered a fatal arrow wound en route and died in Havana.
Pontano, Giovanni
(1422-1503) Italian humanist statesman and poet
Educated in his native Umbria, he entered the service of the Aragonese king of Naples, alfonso i, becoming a royal secretary. Under his successor ferdinand i (Fer-rante), Pontano was appointed secretary of state (1486) and played a leading role in the political and military affairs of the kingdom until the conquest by the French under Charles VIII (1495).
Early in his career Pontano had become a dominant influence in the neapolitan academy and acted as its official head from 1471. His devotion to classical learning, which led him to adopt the name Jovianus (or the Italianized form, Gioviano) Pontanus, inspired his many and varied Latin works in prose and verse. His prose works include a number of stories and essays or dialogues, often on conventional moral subjects (generosity, fortune, etc.) and on philology and astrology; and a history, De bello napoletano, on the war between the French and the house of Aragon. His poetry was held by some contemporaries, among them Erasmus, to rival or surpass its classical models, such as Theocritus and Virgil. It includes three pastoral eclogues (Acon, Quinquennius, Maeon) and three idylls (Meliseus, Lepidina, Coryle), published by the Aldine press in 1518, that greatly influenced the revival of interest in classical pastoral verse in the Renaissance.
Pontelli, Baccio
(1450-c. 1492) Italian architect Pontelli, who was born in Florence, first trained as a woodcarver and worked in the cathedral in Pisa and in Urbino. He probably learned the technique of castle construction from francesco di giorgio martini and duringthe 1480s and 1490s he built fortresses in Ostia, Iesi, Osimo, and Senigallia. He also fortified the Santuario della Sta. Casa at Loreto (1490-94) and built other churches and religious buildings, many of them for the popes Six-tus IV and Innocent VIII. He died in Urbino.
Pontormo, Jacopo da (Jacopo Carrucci)
(1494-1557) Italian painter
Born near Empoli, the son of the painter and draftsman Bartolommeo Carrucci, Pontormo probably became a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci in about 1511. He was then apprenticed to albertinelli and piero di cosimo before becoming the assistant of andrea del sarto, by whom he was profoundly influenced. Early works in the style of Andrea del Sarto include the Visitation (1514-16; SS. Annun-ziata, Florence), but a more individual approach is evident in the complex painting Joseph in Egypt (1518-19; National Gallery, London), which owes a clear debt to durer and includes a portrait of Pontormo’s pupil and adopted son Angelo bronzino. In about 1520 Pontormo decorated the Medici family villa at Poggia a Caiano with mythological scenes, after which he executed further decorations for the Certosa near Florence in a mannerist style. Pontormo then embarked upon his masterpiece, a cycle of paintings in the Capponi chapel of Sta. Felicita, Florence (1525-28), loosely based upon michelangelo’s Pietd. These works included an entombment scene with a self-portrait of the artist and the Deposition. Later works include the Visitation (1528-30; Carmignano, Pieve) and fresco decorations for the choir of San Lorenzo, Florence (1554-57), a major work, influenced by Michelangelo, of which only the original drawings survive. A recluse in his later years, Pontormo wrote a diary (1554-57) that vividly illuminates his obsessive and neurotic character.
Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio de Sacchis)
(c. 14841539) Italian painter
Born in Pordenone in Friuli, Pordenone was a pupil of Pellegrino da San Daniele, although early influences also included Giorgione and Mantegna. In about 1515 he moved to Rome where he was further influenced by the works of Michelangelo, Correggio, and Raphael and developed his taste for highly dramatic illusionistic painting. His masterpiece was the cycle of frescoes on the Passion in Cremona cathedral (c. 1521), painted in a distinctly mannerist style that is also evident in his painted dome in Tre-viso cathedral (1520-22) and his frescoes at Piacenza (1531; Madonna di Campagna). He eventually settled in Venice where, for a brief time, he rivaled titian. Both Titian and rubens adopted elements of his style.
Portinari altarpiece
(c. 1475/77) A large-scale triptych commissioned from Hugo van der goes by Tommaso Portinari, the Italian agent of the Medici in Bruges, for the church of the hospital of Sta. Maria Nuova, Florence (now in the Uffizi, Florence). The Adoration scene on the central panel is flanked by portraits of the donor and his family with their patron saints on the wings. An Annunciation, painted in grisaille, is revealed when the wings are closed. See Plate VI.
Portolans
Sailors’ charts based on practical navigational experience and giving details of features of interest to ships’ pilots. Inland features are seldom marked. In use from at least the late 13th to the late 15th century, the por-tolans’ main function was to record bearings, distances, coastal landmarks, and hazards for the guidance of mariners. They were generally hand written on parchment, and were based on the assumption that the Earth is flat. Most portolans were of southern European origin and many famous ones can be found in the 13th-century Com-passo di navigare, a comprehensive survey of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.
Portuguese language
The Romance language of more than 85 million speakers in Portugal, Brazil, the Azores, and a few formerly colonial areas of Africa and Asia. Gali-cian or Galego, spoken in northwestern Spain, is a dialect of Portuguese. Brazilian Portuguese differs in generally minor details of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar from the language of the mother country. The region of the Iberian peninsula known as Lusitania took its name from the Celts who settled there about 1000 bce and were particularly concentrated in the Serra da Estrela. Some of these tribes for a time successfully resisted Roman attempts at colonization in the second and first centuries bce, while others, such as the Conii in Algarve, accepted Roman rule. Roman conquest of the region was completed by Julius and Augustus Caesar.
Portuguese derives from the Vulgar Latin spoken in the province, but, like Spanish, reflects the influences of later invasions (Germanic and Arabic) and the country’s subsequent cultural (French and Italian borrowings) and imperial (African and Amerindian words) history. Germanic tribes invaded the whole of the Iberian peninsula in the fifth century ce. The kingdom of the Suevi (Swabians) in the north was taken over by the dominant Visigoths towards the end of the sixth century. In 711 the Moors occupied all areas except Asturias (east of Galicia, the present province of Oviedo) and the Basque homeland. Portugal’s national identity, which assured the separate development of the language, evolved during the slow process of the reconquest. The Moors were driven from Galicia in the eighth century and from Coimbra in 1064 (by Ferdinand I of Castile), and by the 12th century the foundation of national independence had been established.
The earliest extant documents in which Portuguese has quite distinctive features date from about 1190, but the language had probably developed its characteristics by the 10th century. The earliest literary texts (Portuguese and Galician) are the three 13th-century cancioneiros (da Ajuda, da Vaticana, and Colocci-Brancuti), which reveal a thorough absorption of Provencal poetry. Portuguese was standardized in the 16th century on the basis of the dialect of Lisbon and Coimbra, though the orthography of some words remains unsettled, despite several official efforts to reform spelling. Grammatically the language retains some complex features lost in modern Spanish, for example a number of subjunctives. Among phonetic characteristics are the nasalization of vowels and diphthongs (which can be indicated by the tilde) and the tendency to pronounce final s and z as a sound like English sh. As in French, acute, grave, and circumflex accents are used to indicate pronunciation, mark contractions, and distinguish homonyms. Important early lexicographical works include the bilingual Dictionarium lusitanico-latinum (1611) by Bishop Augustinho Barbosa (1590-1649) and the Diccionario de lingua portugueza (1789) by Antonio de Moraes e Silva (1755-1824), which has been continually revised and reissued.
Postel, Guillaume
(1510-1581) French orientalist, linguist, and visionary
Postel was born at Barenton. A member of Francis I’s embassy to Constantinople in 1537, he traveled in the Middle East before returning to Paris; at the College de France he taught Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic and became the first professor of oriental languages. He entered the priesthood (1544) and returned to the Orient to preach reconciliation between Christians and Muslims. In Italy, where he spent 10 years, he was imprisoned by the Inquisition. In his writings Postel expounded his ideal of the concordia mundi: his works include De orbis terrae concordia (1544), Protevangile de Jacques (1552), and Les Tres Merveilleuses Victoires des femmes (1553).
Pourbus family
A family of Flemish artists who in three generations were active as portrait painters. Pieter Pourbus (c. 1510-84) was a native of Gouda but by 1538 was in Bruges as the pupil of Lancelot blondeel. A Last Judgment in Bruges museum shows a debt to Michelangelo. He also worked as a surveyor for Charles V and for the city of Bruges and painted a number of portraits, among them one of Jan van der Gheenste (1583; Brussels museum). His son, Frans the Elder (1545-81), was born in Bruges and became a disciple of Frans floris. His altarpiece of Christ and the Doctors (1571; St. Bavon,Ghent) contains portraits of some eminent contemporaries, and he also practiced as a portraitist in a more conventional sense. Frans’s son, Frans the Younger (15691622), was born in Antwerp and became one of the most distinguished court portraitists of his time. He worked from 1592 for the Hapsburg archducal court at Brussels before moving in 1600 to Mantua, where he worked at the court of Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. Examples of his output in Italy are in the Pitti gallery, Florence. In 1609 he was summoned to Paris by Queen Marie de’ Medici, for whom he worked until his death.
Prague (Czech Praha)
The capital city of Bohemia (now part of the Czech Republic), situated on the River Vltava. Celts, Slavs, and Avars lived on the site before Prague was founded in the ninth century. Under Puremyslid rule from the ninth century to 1306, Prague was the nucleus of Bohemia, and the city prospered on account of its position on important trade routes during the late Middle Ages. Prague developed as a major European city during the reign (1346-78) of Emperor Charles IV, who founded the Charles University (1348) and encouraged civic expansion. By the late 16th century Prague’s population had risen to over 50,000.
During the early 15th century Prague became a center of the hussite reformers (see huss, jan); there followed the first defenestration of prague and the popular rising (1419) that led to the Hussite wars. After the death of King Louis II of Hungary at mohacs (1526), Prague and Bohemia passed to the Catholic Hapsburgs who were determined to suppress Bohemian Protestantism; in the 1540s a Jesuit school for young nobles was founded in Prague. rudolf ii made his permanent residence in Prague’s Hradschin palace and there assembled his great art collection. In 1618 the second defenestration of prague was followed by the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War (1618) and the crushing of Bohemian Protestantism at the battle of the white mountain near Prague (1620).
The Charles University was an important center of mathematical and astronomical studies, which in the reign of Rudolf II attracted Tycho brahe and Johannes kepler. St. Vitus’s cathedral was begun in 1344 and parts of the new town and the Jewish ghetto survive from the 14th century.
Praise of Folly, The (Latin Encomium Moriae)
A prose satire written in Latin by erasmus in 1509 and first published in 1511. It was composed in its earliest form at the Chelsea home of Sir Thomas more, and its original title is a pun on More’s name, as Erasmus’s dedication to him makes plain. In it the goddess Folly, in a formal oration, addresses the multitude of her disciples and congratulates herself on how all mankind is enrolled in her train: princes, courtiers, statesmen, scholars, poets, lawyers, philosophers, and, most pointedly, theologians. The satire on the follies of churchmen was the heart of the work and provoked much fury from its victims. The work was an extraordinary best-seller: 42 Latin editions appeared in Erasmus’s lifetime and it was soon translated into French (1520), German (1520), and English (1549).
