Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/291

Rh hundred mathematicians. His life has been written by Affo, Mazzuchelli, and others.  BALDINGER,, a German physician of considerable eminence, and the author of a great number of medical publications, was born near Erfurt, 13th May 1738. He studied medicine at Erfurt, Halle, and Jena, and in 1761 was intrusted with the superintendence of the military hospitals connected with the Prussian encampment near Torgau. He published, in 1765, a dissertation on the diseases of soldiers, which met with so favourable a reception that he published an enlarged edition, under the title of Treatise on the Diseases tJiat prevail in Armies, Langensalza, 1774, 8vo. In 1768 he became professor of medicine at Jena, whence he removed, in 1773, to Gottingen, and in 1785 to Marburg, where he died of apoplexy on the 21st of January 1804. Among his pupils were Akermann. Sommering, and Blumenbach. Some eighty-four separate treatises are mentioned as having pro ceeded from his pen, in addition to numerous papers scat tered through various collections and journals.  BALDINUCCI,, a distinguished Italian writer on the history of the arts, was born at Florence about 1624, and died in 1696. His chief work is entitled Notizie de Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in q^la (dal 1260 sino al 1670), and was first published, in six vols. 4to, 1681-1728. The capital defect of this work is the attempt to derive all Italian art from the schools of Florence. A good edition is that by Ranalli (5 vols. 8vo, Florence, 1845-47). Baldinucci s whole works have been published in fourteen vols. at Milan, 1808-12.  BALDOVINETTI,, was a distinguished painter of Florence in the 15th century, whose works have now become very scarce. Hogarth takes him as a type of those obscure artists to whom the affected amateurs of his time were wont to ascribe old paintings &quot; Tis a fine piece of Alessio Baldovinetti, in his third manner.&quot; His father, Baldovinetti, belonged to a merchant family of good stand ing and fortune. Alessio was born in 1422, and took to painting, according to Vasari, against his father s desire. His art was distinguished rather for study than for genius. It represents completely some of the leading characters of the Florentine school in that age. It was an age of diligent schooling and experiment, in which art endeavoured to master more of the parts and details of nature than she had mastered heretofore, and to improve her technical means for their representation. Among the parts of nature especially studied in the 15th century, were landscape and natural history, the particulars of scenery, and the charac ters of birds, beasts, and plants. Alessio Baldovinetti sur passed all his contemporaries in attention to these matters. In Vasari s words, you see in his paintings &quot; rivers, bridges, stones, grasses, fruits, roads, fields, cities, castles, arenas, and an infinity of suchlike things.&quot; From this quality of his art it has been guessed, without sufficient cause, that he was the pupil of Paolo Uccelli, the first Florentine master who devoted himself to such matters. For the rest, this ex treme care and minuteness renders his manner somewhat hard. Like many other painters of his time, he treats draperies, hair, and such parts, with a manner that shows the influence of the goldsmith, and is more proper to metal work than to painting. His principal extant works are a nativity in the church of the Annunziati, an altar-piece, No. 24, in the gallery of the Uffizi, and another, No. 2, in the gallery of ancient pictures in the Academy of Arts at Florence. The great work of his life was a series of frescoes from the Old Testament in the chapel of the Gianfigliazzi family in the church of Sta Trinita, containing many in teresting contemporary portraits ; but these were destroyed about 1760. He also designed a likeness of Dante for the cathedral of Florence in 1465. His technical experiments were of the same nature as tho^e made by his contempo raries Pesellino, Pollaiuolo, and Domenico Veniziano, who endeavoured to find out an oil medium at Florence before Antonello da Messina had brought to Venice the secrets of the Flemish practice. Vasari relates how Alessio thought- he had made a great discovery with the mixture of yolk of egg and heated vernice liquida, but how the work so painted presently became discoloured. He understood mosaic as well as painting, and between 1481 and 1484 was engaged in repairing ancient mosaics, first in the church of San Miniato, next in the baptistery at Florence. He is said to have instructed Dominico Ghirlandaio (see BIGOEDI) in this art. He died on the 29th of August 1499, within two years and a half of the completion of his frescoes in the Gianfigliazzi chapel. (Vasari, ed. Lemonnier, vol. iv. pp. 101-107 ; Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Hist, of Painting in Italy, vol. ii. pp. 372-381.)  BALDUINUS,, a distinguished professor of civil law in the university of Bologna. He was by birth a Bolognese, and is reputed to have been of a noble family. He was a pupil of Azo, and the master of Odofredus, of Hostiensis, and of Jacobus de Ravanis, the last of whom has the reputation of having first applied dialectical forms to legal science. His great fame as a jurist caused him to be elected podesta of the city of Genoa, where he was intrusted with the reform of the laws of the republic. He died at Bologna in 1225, and has left behind him some treatises on Procedure, which have the merit of being the earliest of their kind.  BALDUR, one of the most interesting figures of the Scandinavian mythology, was the son of Odin and Frigg. His name (from baldr, the foremost or pre-eminent one) denoted his supreme excellence and beauty. In the Gylfeyinning we read that he was so amiable that all loved him, so beautiful that a light seemed to shine about him, and his face and hair were for ever refulgent. He was the mildest, wisest, and most eloquent of the ^Esir ; and when he pronounced a judgment, it was infallible. His dwelling was in Brejdablik (far-sight), where nothing impure could come, and where the most obscure question could be explained. The wonderful legend of his death is first dimly recorded in the Vdluspa, the grandest and most ancient of Eddaic poems, and more fully in the younger Edda. Baldur was visited by evil dreams, and felt his life to be in danger. His mother, Frigg, took oath of all things in the world, animal, vegetable, and mineral, that they should not slay her son. The gods being then secure, found pastime in setting the good Baldur in their midst, and in shooting or hurling stones at his invulnerable body. Then Loki, the evil god, took on him the form of a woman and went to Frigg in Fensal. From Frigg he learned that of all things in the earth but one could injure Baldur, and that was a little tree westward from Valhal, that was too young to take the oath. Thither went Loki and found the plant ; it was the mistletoe. He plucked it up, fashioned it into an arrow, and went back to the JSair. They were still in a circle, shooting at Baldur ; and outside the ring stood the blind god Hoder, of whom Loki asked wherefore he did not shoot. When Hoder had excused himself because of his blindness, Loki offered to aim for him, and Hoder, shooting the arrow of mistletoe, Baldur suddenly fell, pierced and dead. No such misfortune had ever yet befallen gods or men ; there was long silence in heaven, and then with one accord there broke out a loud noise of weeping. The .^Esir dared not revenge the deed, because the place was holy, but Frigg, rushing into their midst, besought them to send one to Hel to fetch him back. Hel promised to let him go if all things in heaven and earth were unanimous in wishing it to be so; but when inquiry was made, a creature called Thokt was found 