See A. L. Zisserman, Fieldmarshal Prince A. I. Baryatinski (Russ.) (Moscow, 1888-1891).
BARYE, ANTOINE LOUIS (1796-1875), French sculptor, was born in Paris on the 24th of September 1796. Like many of the sculptors of the Renaissance he began life as a goldsmith. After studying under Bosio, the sculptor, and Gros, the painter, he was in 1818 admitted to the École des Beaux Arts. But it was not till 1823, when he was working for Fauconnier, the goldsmith, that he discovered his real bent from watching the wild beasts in the Jardin des Plantes, making vigorous studies of them in pencil drawings worthy of Delacroix and then modelling them in sculpture on a large or small scale. In 1831 he exhibited his "Tiger devouring a Crocodile," and in 1832 had mastered a style of his own in the "Lion and Snake." Thenceforward Barye, though engaged in a perpetual struggle with want, exhibited year after year these studies of animals—admirable groups which reveal him as inspired by a spirit of true romance and a feeling for the beauty of the antique, as in "Theseus and the Minotaur" (1847), "Lapitha and Centaur" (1848), and numerous minor works now very highly valued. Barye was no less successful in sculpture on a small scale, and excelled in representing animals in their most familiar attitudes. As examples of his larger work we may mention the Lion of the Column of July, of which the plaster model was cast in 1839, various lions and tigers in the gardens of the Tuileries, and the four groups—War, Peace, Strength, and Order (1854). In 1852 he cast his bronze "Jaguar devouring a Hare." The fame he deserved came too late to the sculptor. He was made professor at the museum in 1854, and was elected to the Academy of Fine Arts in 1868. He died on the 25th of June 1875. The mass of admirable work left to us by Barye entitles him to be regarded as the greatest artist of animal life of the French school, and as the creator of a new class of art which has attracted such men as Frémiet, Peter, Cain, and Gardet, who are regarded with justice as his worthiest followers.
Authorities.—Emile Lamé, Les Sculpteurs d'animaux; M. Barye (Paris, 1856); Gustave Planche, "M. Barye," Revue des deux mondes (July 1851); Théophile Silvestre, Histoires des artistes vivants (Paris, 1856); Arsène Alexandre, "A. L. Barye," Les Artistes célèbres, ed. E. Muntz (Paris, 1889) (with a bibliog.); Charles DeKay, Life and Works of A. L. Barye (1889), published by the Barye Monument Assoc. of New York; Jules Claretie, Peintres et sculpteurs contemporains (1882); Roger Ballu, L'Œuvre de Barye (1890); Charles Sprague Smith, Barbizon Days (1903).
(H. Fr.)
BARYTES, a widely distributed mineral composed of barium sulphate (BaSO4). Its most striking feature and the one from which it derives its name barytes, barite (from the Greek βαρύς heavy) or heavy spar, is its weight. Its specific gravity of 4.5 is about twice as great as that of salt and of many other colourless, transparent and glassy minerals not unlike barytes in general appearance. The mineral is usually found in a state of considerable chemical purity, though small amounts of strontium and calcium sulphates may isomorphously replace the barium sulphate: ammonium sulphate is also sometimes present, whilst clay, silica, bituminous matter, &c., may be enclosed as impurities.
Crystals of barytes are orthorhombic and isomorphous with the strontium and lead sulphates (celestite and anglesite); they are usually very perfectly developed and present great variety of form. The simplest are rhomb-shaped tables (fig. 1) bounded by the two faces of the basal pinacoid (c) and the four faces of the prism (m); the angle between the prism-faces (mm) is 78° 23′, whilst that between c and m is 90°. The mineral has a very perfect cleavage parallel to the faces c and m, and the cleavage surfaces are perfectly smooth and bright. The crystals of prismatic habit represented in figs. 2 and 3 are bounded by the domes d and f and the basal pinacoid c; fig. 4 is a plan of a still more complex crystal. Twinning is represented only by twin-lamellae, which are parallel to the planes m and f and are of secondary origin, having been produced by pressure.
Crystals of barytes may be transparent and colourless, or white and opaque, or of a yellow, brown, bluish or greenish colour. Well developed crystals are extremely common, but the mineral occurs also in a granular, earthy, or stalactitic condition. It is known as cawk in the Derbyshire lead mines. The "crested" or "cock's comb" barytes occurs as rounded aggregations of thin lamellar crystals.
Barytes is of common occurrence in metalliferous veins, especially those which yield ores of lead and silver; some of the largest and most perfect crystals of colourless barytes were obtained from the lead mines near Dufton in Westmorland. It is found also in beds of iron ore, and the haematite mines of the Cleator Moor district in west Cumberland have yielded many extremely fine crystals, specimens of which may be seen in all mineral collections. In the neighbourhood of Nottingham, and other places in the Midlands, barytes forms a cementing material in the Triassic sandstones; amber-coloured crystals of the same mineral are found in the fuller's earth at Nutfield in Surrey; and the septarian nodules in London Clay contain crystals of barytes as well as of calcite. Crystals are found as a rarity in the amygdaloidal cavities of igneous rocks.
Artificially prepared crystals of barytes may be obtained by allowing a solution of a soluble barium salt to diffuse slowly into a solution of a soluble sulphate. Barium chloride is present in some natural waters, and when this is the case the interaction of sulphates results in a deposition of barytes, as has occurred in the pipes and water-boxes of the Newcastle-on-Tyne coal mines.