Page:EB1911 - Volume 04.djvu/265

 of Naples, the enemy of the house of Sforza, he planned the subjugation of the vassal lords of Romagna, and Giovanni, feeling his position insecure, left Rome for Pesaro with his wife. By Christmas 1495 they were back in Rome; the pope had all his children around him, and celebrated the carnival with a series of magnificent festivities. But he decided that he had done with Sforza, and annulled the marriage on the ground of the husband’s impotence (March 1497). In order to cement his alliance with Naples, he married Lucrezia to Alphonso of Aragon, duke of Bisceglie, a handsome youth of eighteen, related to the Neapolitan king. But he too realized the fickleness of the Borgias’ favour when Alexander backed up Louis XII. of France in the latter’s schemes for the conquest of Naples. Bisceglie fled from Rome, fearing for his life, and the pope sent Lucrezia to receive the homage of the city of Spoleto as governor. On her return to Rome in 1499, her husband, who really loved her, was induced to join her once more. A year later he was murdered by the order of her brother Cesare. After the death of Bisceglie, Lucrezia retired to Nepi, and then returned to Rome, where she acted for a time as regent during Alexander’s absence. The latter now was anxious for a union between his daughter and Alphonso, son and heir to Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara. The negotiations were somewhat difficult, as neither Alphonso nor his father was anxious for a connexion with the house of Borgia, and Lucrezia’s own reputation was not unblemished. However, by bribes and threats the opposition was overcome, and in September 1501 the marriage was celebrated by proxy with great magnificence in Rome. On Lucrezia’s arrival at Ferrara she won over her reluctant husband by her youthful charm (she was only twenty-two), and from that time forth she led a peaceful life, about which there was hardly a breath of scandal. On the death of Ercole in 1505, her husband became duke, and she gathered many learned men, poets and artists at her court, among whom were Ariosto, Cardinal Bembo, Aldus Manutius the printer, and the painters Titian and Dosso Dossi. She devoted herself to the education of her children and to charitable works; the only tragedy connected with this period of her life is the murder of Ercole Strozzi, who is said to have admired her and fallen a victim to Alphonso’s jealousy. She died on the 24th of June 1519, leaving three sons and a daughter by the duke of Ferrara, besides one son Rodrigo by the duke of Bisceglie, and possibly another of doubtful paternity. She seems to have been a woman of very mediocre talents, and only played a part in history because she was the daughter of Alexander VI. and the sister of Cesare Borgia. While she was in Rome she was probably no better and no worse than the women around her, but there is no serious evidence for the charges of incest with her father and brothers which were brought against her by the scandal-mongers of the time.

See the bibliographies for and ; and especially F. Gregorovius’s Lucrezia Borgia (Stuttgart, 1874), the standard work on the subject; also W. Gilbert’s Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (London, 1869), which, while containing much information, is quite without historic value; and G. Campori’s “Una Vittima della Storia, Lucrezia Borgia,” in the Nuova Antologia (August 31, 1866), which aims at the rehabilitation of Lucrezia.

 BORGLUM, SOLON HANNIBAL (1868–&emsp;&emsp;), American sculptor, was born in Ogden, Utah, on the 22nd of December 1868, the son of a Danish wood-carver. He studied under Louis F. Rebisso in the Cincinnati art school in 1895–1897, and under Frémiet in Paris. He took as his chief subjects incidents of western life, cowboys and Indians, with which he was familiar from his years on the ranch; notably “Lassoing Wild Horses,” “Stampeding Wild Horses,” “Last Round-up,” “On the Border of White Man’s Land,” and “Burial on the Plains.” His elder brother, Gutzon Borglum (b. 1867), also showed himself an artist of some originality.

 BORGOGNONE, AMBROGIO (fl. 1473–1524), Italian painter of the Milanese school, whose real name was Ambrogio Stefani da Fossano, was approximately contemporary with Leonardo da Vinci, but represented, at least during a great part of his career, the tendencies of Lombard art anterior to the arrival of that master—the tendencies which he had adopted and perfected from the hands of his predecessors Foppa and Zenale. We are not precisely informed of the dates either of the death or the birth of Borgognone, who was born at Fossano in Piedmont, and whose appellation was due to his artistic affiliation to the Burgundian school. His fame is principally associated with that of one great building, the Certosa, or church and convent of the Carthusians at Pavia, for which he worked much and in many different ways. It is certain, indeed, that there is no truth in the tradition which represents him as having designed, in 1473, the celebrated façade of the Certosa itself. His residence there appears to have been of eight years’ duration, from 1486, when he furnished the designs of the figures of the virgin, saints and apostles for the choir-stalls, executed in tarsia or inlaid wood work by Bartolommeo Pola, till 1494, when he returned to Milan. Only one known picture, an altar-piece at the church San Eustorgio, can with probability be assigned to a period of his career earlier than 1486. For two years after his return to Milan he worked at the church of San Satiro in that city. From 1497 he was engaged for some time in decorating with paintings the church of the Incoronata in the neighbouring town at Lodi. Our notices of him thenceforth are few and far between. In 1508 he painted for a church in Bergamo; in 1512 his signature appears in a public document of Milan; in 1524—and this is our last authentic record—he painted a series of frescoes illustrating the life of St Sisinius in the portico of San Simpliciano at Milan. Without having produced any works of signal power or beauty, Borgognone is a painter of marked individuality. He holds an interesting place in the most interesting period of Italian art. The National Gallery, London, has two fair examples of his work—the separate fragments of a silk banner painted for the Certosa, and containing the heads of two kneeling groups severally of men and women; and a large altar-piece of the marriage of St Catherine, painted for the chapel of Rebecchino near Pavia. But to judge of his real powers and peculiar ideals—his system of faint and clear colouring, whether in fresco, tempera or oil; his somewhat slender and pallid types, not without something that reminds us of northern art in their Teutonic sentimentality as well as their Teutonic fidelity of portraiture; the conflict of his instinctive love of placidity and calm with a somewhat forced and borrowed energy in figures where energy is demanded, his conservatism in the matter of storied and minutely diversified backgrounds—to judge of these qualities of the master as they are, it is necessary to study first the great series of his frescoes and altar-pieces at the Certosa, and next those remains of later frescoes and altar-pieces at Milan and Lodi, in which we find the influence of Leonardo and of the new time mingling with, but not expelling, his first predilections.

 BORGO SAN DONNINO, a town and episcopal see of Emilia, Italy, in the province of Parma, 14 m. N.W. by rail from the town of Parma. Pop. (1901) town, 6251; commune, 12,109. It occupies the site of the ancient Fidentia, on the Via Aemilia; no doubt, as its name shows, of Roman origin. Here M. Lucullus defeated the democrats under Carbo in 82 It was independent under Vespasian, but seems soon to have become a village dependent on Parma. Its present name comes from the martyrdom of S. Domninus under Maximian in 304. The cathedral, erected in honour of this saint, is one of the finest and best-preserved Lombardo-Romanesque churches of the 11th–13th centuries in north Italy. The upper part of the façade is incomplete, but the lower, with its three portals and sculptures, is very fine; the interior is simple and well-proportioned, and has not been spoilt by restorations. For the bénitier, a work of the early 11th century, see Rassegna d’Arte, 1905, 180. Not far from the town is the small church of S. Antonio del Viennese, a 13th-century structure in brick (ib., 1906, 22). The Palazzo Comunale, in the Gothic-Lombard style, is a work of the 14th century. Borgo S. Donnino is an important centre for the produce and cattle of Emilia.

 BORGU, or, an inland country of West Africa. The western part is included in the French colony of (q.v.); the eastern division forms the Borgu province of the British protectorate of Nigeria. Borgu is bounded N.E. and E. by the 