BRUNELLESCHI (or Brunellesco), FILIPPO (1379-1446), Italian architect, the reviver in Italy of the Roman or Classic style, was born at Florence in 1379. His father, a notary, had destined him for his own profession, but observing the boy's talent for all sorts of mechanism, placed him in the gild of goldsmiths. Filippo quickly became a skilled workman, and perfected himself in the knowledge of sculpture, perspective and geometry. He designed some portions of houses in Florence, and in 1401 he was one of the competitors for the design of the gates of the baptistery of San Giovanni. He was unsuccessful, though his work obtained praise, and he soon afterwards set out for Rome. He studied hard, and resolved to do what he could to revive the older classical style, which had died out in Italy. Moreover, he was one of the first to apply the scientific laws of perspective to his work. In 1407 he returned to Florence, just at the time when it was resolved to attempt the completion of the cathedral church of Santa Maria del Fiore. Brunelleschi's plan for effecting this by a cupola was approved, but it was not till 1419, and after innumerable disputes, that the work was finally entrusted to him. At first he was hampered by his colleague Ghiberti, of whom he skilfully got rid. He did not live to see the completion of his great work, and the lantern on the summit was put up not altogether in accordance with the instructions and plans left by him. The great cupola, one of the triumphs of architecture, exceeds in some measurements that of St Peter's at Rome, and has a more massive and striking appearance. Besides this masterpiece Brunelleschi executed numerous other works, among the most remarkable of which are the Pitti palace at Florence, on the pattern of which are based the Tuscan palaces of the 15th century, the churches of San Lorenzo and Spirito Santo, and the still more elegant Capella del Pazza. The beautiful carved crucifix in the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence is also the work of Brunelleschi. He died in Florence on the 16th of April 1446, and was buried in the cathedral church of his native city.
See Manetti, Vita di Brunelleschi (Florence, 1812); Guasti, La cupola di Santa Maria del Fiore (Florence, 1857); von Fabriczy, Filippo Brunelleschi (Stuttgart, 1892).
BRUNET, JACQUES CHARLES (1780-1867), French bibliographer, was born in Paris on the 2nd of November 1780. He was the son of a bookseller, and in 1802 he printed a supplement to the Dictionnaire bibiographique de livres rares (1790) of Duclos and Cailleau. In 1810 there appeared the first edition of his Manuel du libraire et de l'amateur des livres (3 vols.). Brunet published successive editions of his great bibliographical dictionary, which rapidly came to be recognized as the first book of its class in European literature. He died on the 14th of November 1867. Among his other works are Nouvelles Recherches bibliographiques (1834), Recherches ... sur les éditions originales ... de Rabelais (1852), and an edition of the French poems of J.G. Alione d'Asti, dating from the beginning of the 16th century (1836).
See also a notice by Le Roux de Lincy, prefixed to the catalogue (1868) of his own valuable library. A supplement to the 5th edition (1860-1865) of the Manuel du libraire was published (1878-1880) by P. Deschamps and G. Brunet.
BRUNETIÈRE, FERDINAND (1849-1906), French critic and man of letters, was born at Toulon on the 19th July 1849. After attending a school at Marseilles, he studied in Paris at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. Desiring to follow the profession of teaching, he entered for examination at the École Normale Supérieure, but failed, and the outbreak of war in 1870 debarred him from a second attempt. He turned to private tuition and to literary criticism. After the publication of successful articles in the Revue Bleue, he became connected with the Revue des Deux Mondes, first as contributor, then as secretary and sub-editor, and finally, in 1893, as principal editor. In 1886 he was appointed professor of French language and literature at the École Normale, a singular honour for one who had not passed through the academic mill; and later he presided with distinction over various conférences at the Sorbonne and elsewhere. He was decorated with the Legion of Honour in 1887, and became a member of the Academy in 1893. The published works of M. Brunetière consist largely of reprinted papers and lectures. They include six series of Études critiques (1880-1898) on French history and literature; Le Roman naturaliste (1883); Histoire et Littérature, three series (1884-1886); Questions de critique (1888; second series, 1890). The first volume of L'Évolution de genres dans l'histoire de la littérature, lectures in which a formal classification, founded on the Darwinian theory, is applied to the phenomena of literature, appeared in 1890; and his later works include a series of studies (2 vols., 1894) on the evolution of French lyrical poetry during the 19th century, a history of
French classic literature begun in 1904, a monograph on Balzac (1906), and various pamphlets of a polemical nature dealing with questions of education, science and religion. Among these may be mentioned Discours académiques (1901), Discours de combat (1900, 1903), L'Action sociale du christianisme (1904), Sur les chemins de la croyance (1905). M. Brunetière was an orthodox Roman Catholic, and his political sympathies were in the main reactionary. He possessed two prime qualifications of a great critic, vast erudition and unflinching courage. He was never afraid to diverge from the established critical view, his mind was closely logical and intensely accurate, and he rarely made a trip in the wide field of study over which it ranged. The most honest, if not the most impartial, of magisterial writers, he had a hatred of the unreal, and a contempt for the trivial; nobody was more merciless towards those who affected effete and decadent literary forms, or maintained a vicious standard of art. On the other hand, his intolerance, his sledge-hammer methods of attack and a certain dry pedantry alienated the sympathies of many who recognized the remarkable qualities of his mind. The application of universal principles to every question of letters is a check to dilettante habits of thought, but it is apt to detain the critic in a somewhat narrow and dusty path. M. Brunetière's influence, however, cannot be disputed, and it was in the main thoroughly sound and wholesome. He died on the 9th of December 1906.
His Manual of the History of French Literature was translated into English in 1898 by R. Derechef. Among critics of Brunetière see J. Lemaître, Les Contemporains (1887, &c.), and J. Sargeret, Les Grands Corvertis (1906).
BRUNHILD (M.H. Ger. Brünhilt or Prünhilt, Nor. Brynhildr), the name of a mythical heroine of various versions of the legend of the Nibelungs. The name means "the warrior woman in armour" (from O.H. Ger. brunjô, brunja, M.H. Ger. brunige, brünje, brünne, a cuirass or coat of mail, O. Eng. byrnie, and O.H. Ger. hiltja, hilta, war), and in the Norse versions of the Nibelung myth, which preserves more of the primitive traditions than the Nibelungenlied, Brunhild is a valkyrie, the daughter of Odin, by whom, as a punishment for having against his orders helped a warrior to victory, she has been cast under a spell of sleep on Hindarfjell, a lonely rock summit, until the destined hero shall penetrate the wall of fire by which she is surrounded, and wake her. This is a variant of the widespread myth which survives in the popular fairy-story of "the sleeping beauty." The ingenuity of some German scholars has made of Brunhild a personification of the day, held prisoner upon the hill-tops till in the morning the sun-god comes to her rescue, then triumphing with him awhile, only to pass once more under the spell of the powers of mist and darkness. She is thus by some commentators contrasted with "the masked warrior woman" Kriemhild (q.v.), a personification of the power of night and death. But whatever be the dim original of the character of Brunhild—as to which authorities are by no means agreed—even in the northern versions its mythical interest is quite subordinate to its purely human interest. In the Volsungasaga she is the heroine of a tragedy of passion and wounded pride; it is she who compasses the death of Sigurd, who has broken his troth plighted to her, and then immolates herself on his funeral pyre in order that in the world of the dead he may be wholly hers. In the Nibelungenlied, on the other hand, she plays a comparatively colourless rôle. She still possesses superhuman attributes: like Atalanta, she can only be won by the man who is able to overcome her in trials of speed and strength; but, instead of a valkyrie sleeping on a lonely rock, she is, when Sigfrid goes to woo her on behalf of Gunther, queen of Îslant (Îsenlant), living in a castle called the Isenstein. In the tragedy of the death of Sigfrid her part is completely overshadowed by that of "the grim Hagen," and from the moment that the murder is decided on she drops almost completely out of the story. The poet of the Nibelungenlied evidently knew nothing of the tale of her self-immolation; for, though he has nothing definite to say about her after Sigfrid's death, he keeps her alive in a sort of dignified retirement. In the last 5000 lines or so of the poem Brunhild is only mentioned four times and takes no active part in the story. (See further under Nibelungenlied.)
(W. A. P.)
BRUNHILDA (Brunechildis), queen of Austrasia (d. 613), was a daughter of Athanagild, king of the Visigoths. In 567 she was asked in marriage by Sigebert, who was reigning at Metz. She now abjured Arianism and was converted to the orthodox faith, and the union was celebrated at Metz; on which occasion Fortunatus, an Italian poet, who was then at the Frankish court, composed the epithalamium. Chilperic, brother of Sigebert, and king of the west Frankish kingdom, jealous of the renown which this marriage brought to his elder brother, hastened to ask the hand of Galswintha, sister of Brunhilda; but at the instigation of his mistress Fredegond, he assassinated his wife. Sigebert was anxious to avenge his sister-in-law, but on the intervention of Guntram, he accepted the compensation offered by Chilperic, namely the cities of Bordeaux, Cahors and Limoges, with Béarn and Bigorre.