VANINI, LUCILIO

This article appears in Volume V27, Page 895 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: VAN-VIR

VANINI, LUCILIO , or, as he styled himself in his works, Givaio CESARE (1585-1619), Italian free-thinker, was born at Taurisano, near Naples, in 1585. He studied philosophy and theology at Rome, and after his return to Naples applied him-self to the physical studies which had come into vogue with the Renaissance. Like Giordano Bruno, though morally and intellectually inferior to him, he was among those who led the attack on the old scholasticism and helped to lay the foundation of modern philosophy. Vanini resembles Bruno, not only in his wandering life and in his tragic death, but also in his anti-Christian bias. From Naples he went to Padua, where he came under the influence of the Alexandrist Pomponazzi (q.v.), whom he styles his divine master. At Padua he studied law, and was ordained priest. Subsequently he led a roving life in France, Switzerland and the Low Countries, supporting himself by giving lessons and disseminating anti-religious views. He was obliged to flee from Lyons to England in 1614, but was imprisoned in London for some reason for

forty

FORTY

-nine days. Returning to Italy he made an attempt to teach in Genoa, but was driven once more to France, where he made a valiant effort to clear himself of suspicion by publishing a book against atheists, Amphitheatrum Aeternae Providentiae Divine-Magic-um (1615). Though the definitions of God are somewhat pantheistic, the book is sufficiently orthodox, but the arguments are largely ironical, and cannot be taken. as expounding his real views. Vanini expressly tells us so in his second (and only other published)

work

WORK

, De Admirandis Naturae Reginae Deaeque Mortalium Arcanis (Paris, 1616), which, originally certified by two doctors of the Sorbonne, was afterwards re-examined and condemned to the flames. Vanini then left Paris, where he had been staying as chaplain to the marechal de Bassompierre, and began to teach in Toulouse. In November 1618 he was arrested, and after a prolonged trial was condemned, as an atheist, to have his tongue cut out, and to be strangled at the stake, his

body

BODY

to be afterwards burned to ashes. The sentence was executed on the 9th of February 1619.
See

Cousin

, Fragments de philosophie cartesienne (Brussels, 18384c'), i. 199; French trans. M. X. Rousselot (Paris, 1842); John Owen, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance (London, 1893), 345419; J. Toulan, Etude sur L. Vanini (Strassburg, 1869); Cesare Cantu, Gli Erelici d'Italia (Turin, 1867), iii. 72 ff.; Fuhrmann, Leben and Schicksale (

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1800) ; Vaisse, L. Vanini
pHs, 1871); Palumbo, Vanini, e i suoi tempi (Naples, 1878); P ssamonti in Rivista italiana di filo,;ofia (1893), vol. iii. uANLOO, CHARLES ANDREW (1705-1765), subject painter, a younger brother of John Baptist Vanloo (q.v.), was born at vice on the 15th of February 1705. He received some inst"uction from his brother, and like him studied in Rome under Luti. Leaving Italy in 1723, he worked in Paris, where he gained the first prize for historical painting. After again visiting Italy in 1727, he was employed by the king of Sardinia, for whom he painted a-

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of subjects illustrative of Tasso. In 1734 he settled in Paris, and in 1735 became a member of the French

Academy

ACADEMY, GREEK
ACADEMY, ROYAL

; and he was decorated with the order of St Michael and appointed principal painter to the king. By his simplicity of style and correctness of

design

DESIGN (Fr. desiin, drawing; Lat. designare, to mark out)

, the result of his study of the

great

GREAT

Italian masters, he did much to purify the modern French school; but the contemporary praise that was lavished upon his productions now appears undue andexcessive. His "

Marriage

MARRIAGE

of the Virgin " is preserved in the Louvre. He died at Paris on the 15th of July 1765.

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