Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/425

Rh To this success lie owed his European reputation. From Paris Corelli went to Germany and settled at Munich, where he remained for nearly nine years, much admired at court and in the city. In 1681 he returned to Rome, and contracted a close friendship with Cardinal Ottoboni, who made him the conductor of his private chapel. With the exception of a visit to Naples by invitation of the king, Corelli remained in Rome till his death in 1713. His life was quiet and wholly devoted to his art. The style of execution introduced by him and preserved by his pupils, such as Geminiani, Locatelli, and many otheis, has been of vital importance for the development of violin-playing. In the same sense it may be said that his compositions for the instrument mark an epoch in the history of chamber music; for his influence was not confined to his own country. Even the great Sebastian Bach submitted to it. Musical society in Rome owed much to Corelli. He was received in the highest circles of the aristocracy, and arranged and for a long time presided at the celebrated Monday concerts in the palace of Cardinal Ottoboni. Corelli died possessed of a considerable sum of money and a valuable collection of pictures, the only luxury he had indulged in. Both he left to his benefactor and friend, who, however, generously made over the first part of the legacy to Corelli s relations. The composer s bust, placed on his grave at the expense of the Count Palatine Philip William, and under the super vision of Cardinal Ottoboni, is at present in the Museo Capitolino. Corelli s compositions are distinguished by a beautiful flow of melody and by a masterly treatment of the accompanying parts, which he is justly said to have liberated from the strict rules of counterpoint. Six collec tions of concerti, sonatas, and minor pieces for violin, with accompaniment of other instruments, besides several con certed pieces for strings, are authentically ascribed to this composer. The most important of these is the XI L Stionati a Violino e Violone o Cimbalo (Rome, 1700).  CORENZIO, (c. 1558- 1643), a Greek, studied at Venice under Tintoretto, and then settled at Naples, where he became famous for unscrupulous conduct as a man and rapid execution as an artist. Though careless in com position and a mannerist in style, he possessed an acknow ledged fertility of invention and readiness of hand ; and these qualities, allied to a certain breadth of conception, seem in the eyes of his contemporaries to have atoned for many defects. When Guido Ileni came in 1621 to Naples to paint in the chapel of St Januarius, Corenzio suborned an assassin to take his life. The hired bravo killed Guido s assistant, and effectually frightened Reni, who prudently withdrew to Rome. Corenzio. however, only suffered tem porary imprisonment, and lived long enough to supplant Ilibera in the good graces of Don Pedro di Toledo, viceroy of Naples, who made him his court painter. Corenzio vainly endeavoured to fill Guido s place in the chapel of St Januarius. His work was adjudged to have been under the mark and inferior to that of Fabrizio Santafede and Carracciolo. Yet the numerous frescoes which he left in Neapolitan churches and palaces, and the large wall paint ings which still cover the cupola of the church of Monte- Casino are evidence of uncommon facility, and show that Corenzio was not greatly inferior to the fa prestos of his time. His florid style, indeed, seems well in keeping with the overladen architecture and full-blown decorative orna ment peculiar to the Jesuit builders of the 17th century. Corenzio died, it is said, at the age of eighty-five by a fall from a scaffolding.  CORFU, the ancient Corcyra, an island of Greece, in the Ionian Sea, off the coast of Albania or Epirus, from which it is separated by a strait varying in breadth from less than two to about fifteen miles. In shape it is not un like the sickle or drepane, to which it was compared by the ancients, the hollow side, with the town and harbour of Corfu in the centre, being turned towards the Albanian coast. Its extreme length is about forty miles and its greatest breadth about twenty. The area is estimated at 227 square miles, and the population is about 72,500. Two high and well-defined ranges divide the island into three districts, of which the northern is mountainous, the central undulating, and the southern low-lying. The most im portant of the two ranges is that of San Salvador, probably the ancient Istone, which stretches east and west from Cape St Angelo to Cape St Stefano, and attains its greatest elevation of 3300 feet in the summit from which it takes its name. The second culminates in the mountain of Sand Deca, or Santa Decca, as it is called by misinterpre tation of the Greek designation ol &quot;Aytoi Ae/ca, or the Ten Saints. The whole island, composed as it is of various limestone formations, presents great diversity of surface, and the prospects from the more elevated spots are magnificent.

Vegetation and Agriculture.—Travellers generally agree that, with the exception, perhaps, of Crete, Corfu is the most beautiful of all the Greek isles, but resident foreigners com plain of the monotonous colour of the olive, hose grayish- green is little relieved by the cypress and pine, or the mul berry and jitjitbier. This lack of variety, which is the more to be regretted as the island is adapted for the oak, the plane, the Spanish chestnut, and the walnut, is mainly due to the fact that the government of Venice at one time gave premiums for planting olive-trees, partly to encourage the produce of oil, and partly to discourage the raising of wheat. Once planted, the olive has suited the peoplo. Single trees of first quality yield sometimes as much as 2 gallons of oil, and this with little trouble or expense beyond the collecting and pressing of the fallen fruit. As the trees are allowed to grow unrestrained, they are generally much larger and more wide-spreading than those in Provence or Tuscany, and seme are not less than three centuries old. It is worthy of remark that Homer names, as adorning the gaiden of Alcinous, seven plants only the wild olive, the oil olive, the pear, pomegranate, apple, fig, and vine. Of these the apple and pear are now very inferior in Corfu ; the others thrive well, and are accom panied by all the fruit-trees known in Southern Europe, with addition of the Japanese medlar (or loquat) and, in some spots, of the banana. When undisturbed by cultivation, the myrtle, arbutus, bay, and ilex form a rich brushwood and the minor fora of the island is extensive. Corfiot proprietors in general display little taste for the country, and their absenteeism is probably increased by the &quot; colonia perpetua,&quot; by which the landlord grants a lease to the tenant and his heirs for ever, in return for a rent, payable in kind, and fixed at a certain proportion of the produce. Of old, a tenant thus obtaining half the produce to himself was held to be co-owner of the soil to the extent of one-fourth; and if he had three-fourths of the crop, his ownership came to one-half. Such a tenant could not be expelled but for non-payment, bad culture, or the transfer of his lease without the landlord s consent. Attempts have been made to prohibit so embarrassing a system ; but as it is preferred by the agriculturists, the existing laws permit it. The portion of the olive crop due to the landlord, whether by colonia or ordinary lease, is paid, not according to the actual harvest, but in keeping with the estimates of valuators mutually appointed, who, just before the fruit is ripe, calculate how much each tree will probably yield. The large old fiefs (baronie) in Corfu, as in the other islands, have left their traces in the form of quit-rents (known in Scotland by the name of feu- duties), generally equal to one-tenth of the produce. But they have been much subdivided, and the vassals may by law redeem them.