DELLA GHERARDESCA, UGOLINO (c. 1220-1289), count of Donoratico, was the head of the powerful family of Gherardesca, the chief Ghibelline house of Pisa. His alliance with the Visconti, the leaders of the Guelph faction, through the marriage of his sister with Giovanni Visconti, judge of Gallura, aroused the suspicions of his party, and the Ghibellines being then predominant in Pisa, the disorders in the city caused by Ugolino and Visconti in 1271-1274 led to the arrest of the former and the banishment of the latter. Visconti died soon afterwards, and Ugolino, no longer regarded as dangerous, was liberated and banished. But he immediately began to intrigue with the Guelph towns opposed to Pisa, and with the help of Charles I. of Anjou (q.v.) attacked his native city and forced it to make peace on humiliating terms, pardoning him and all the other Guelph exiles. He lived quietly in Pisa for some years, although working all the time to extend his influence. War having broken out between Pisa and Genoa in 1284, Count Ugolino was given the command of a division of the Pisan fleet. It was by his flight—usually attributed to treachery—that the fortunes of the day were decided and the Pisans totally defeated at La Meloria (October 1284). But the political ability which he afterwards displayed led to his being appointed podestà for a year and capitano del popolo for ten years. Florence and Lucca took advantage of the Pisan defeat to attack the republic, but Ugolino succeeded in pacifying them by ceding certain castles. He was however less anxious to make peace with Genoa, for the return of the Pisan prisoners, including most of the leading Ghibellines, would have diminished his power. He was now the most influential man in Pisa, and was preparing to establish his absolute sovereignty, when for some reason not clearly understood he was forced to share his power with his nephew Nino Visconti, son of Giovanni. The duumvirate did not last, and the count and Nino soon quarrelled. Then Ugolino tried to consolidate his position by entering into negotiations with the archbishop, Ruggieri degli Ubaldini, the leader of the Ghibellines. But that party having revived once more, the archbishop obliged both Nino and Ugolino to leave the city, and had himself elected podestà and capitano del popolo. However, he allowed Ugolino to return soon afterwards, and was even ready to divide the government of the city with him, although he refused to admit his armed followers. The count, determined to be sole master, attempted to get his followers into the city by way of the Arno, and Ruggieri, realizing the danger, aroused the citizens, accusing Ugolino of treachery for having ceded the castles, and after a day’s street fighting (July 1, 1288), Gherardesca was captured and immured together with his sons Gaddo and Uguccione, and his grandsons Nino (surnamed il Brigata) and Anselmuccio, in the Muda, a tower belonging to the Gualandi family; here they were detained for nine months, and then starved to death.
The historic details of the episode are still involved in some obscurity, and although mentioned by Villani and other writers, it owes its fame entirely to Dante, who placed Ugolino and Ruggieri in the second ring (Antenora) of the lowest circle of the Inferno (canto xxxii. 124-140 and xxxiii. 1-90). This terrible but magnificent passage, which includes “thirty lines unequalled by any other thirty lines in the whole dominion of poetry” (Landor), has been paraphrased by Chaucer in the “Monk’s Tale” and more recently by Shelley. But the reason why Dante placed Ugolino among the traitors is not by any means clear, as the flight from La Meloria was not regarded as treachery by any writer earlier than the 16th century, although G. del Noce, in Il Conte U. della Gherardesca (Città di Castello, 1894), states that that was the only motive; Bartoli, in vol. vi. of his Storia della Letteratura italiana, suggests Ugolino’s alliance with the Ghibellines as the motive. The cession of the castles was not treachery but an act of necessity, owing to the desperate conditions of Pisa.
Bibliography.—Besides the above-quoted works see P. Tronci, Annali Pisani (2 vols., Pisa, 1868-1871); S. de Sismondi, Histoire des républiques italiennes (Brussels, 1838); also the various annotated editions of Dante, especially W. W. Vernon’s Readings from the Inferno, vol. ii. (2nd ed., London, 1905).
(L. V.*)
DELLA PORTA, GIOVANNI BATTISTA (c. 1538-1615), Italian natural philosopher, was born of a noble and ancient family at Naples about the year 1538. He travelled extensively not only in Italy but also in France and Spain, and he was still a youth when he published Magia naturalis, sive de miraculis rerum naturalium lib. IV. (1558), the first draft of his Magia naturalis, in twenty books, published in 1589. He founded in Naples the Academia Secretorum Naturae, otherwise known as the Accademia dei Oziosi; and in 1610 he became a member of the Accademia dei Lincei at Rome. He died at Naples on the 4th of February 1615.
The following is a list of his principal writings:—De miraculis rerum naturalium, in four books (1558); De furtivis litterarum notis, in five books (1563, and frequently afterwards, entitling him to high rank among the early writers on cryptography); Phytognomonica (1583, a bulky treatise on the physiology of plants as then understood); Magia naturalis (1589, and often reprinted); De humana physiognomonia, in six books (1591); Villa, in twelve books (1592, an interesting practical treatise on farming, gardening and arboriculture, based upon his own observations at his country-seat near Naples); De refractione, optices parte, in nine books (1593); Pneumatica, in three books (1601); De coelesti physiognomonia, in six books (1601); Elementa curvilinea (1601); De distillatione, in nine books (1604); De munitione, in three books (1608); and De aëris transmutationibus, in four books (1609). He also wrote several Italian comedies Olimpia (1589); La Fantesca (1592); La Trappolaria (1597); I’ Due Fratelli rivali (1601); La Sorella (1607); La Chiappinaria (1609); La Carbonaria (1628); La Cintia (1628). Among all the above-mentioned works the chief interest attaches to the Magia naturalis, in which a strange medley of subjects is discussed, including the reproduction of animals, the transmutation of metals, pyrotechny, domestic economy, statics, hunting, the preparation of perfumes. In book xvii. he describes a number of optical experiments, including a description of the camera obscura (q.v.).
DELLA QUERCIA, or Della Fonte, JACOPO (1374-1438), Italian sculptor, was born at Siena. He was the son of a goldsmith of repute, Pietro d’Agnolo, to whom he doubtless owed much of his training. There are no records of his early life until the year 1394, when he made an equestrian statue of Gian Tedesco. He is next heard of at Florence in 1402, when he was one of six artists who submitted designs for the great gates of the baptistery, in which competition Ghiberti was the victor. From Florence he seems to have gone to Lucca, where in 1406 he executed one of his finest works, the monument of Ilaria del Caretto, wife of Paolo Guinigi. It is uncertain if he visited Ferrara in 1408; but at the end of that year he was engaged in negotiations which resulted in his acceptance of the commission for the famous Fonte Gaia, at Siena, early in 1409. This work was not seriously begun by him until 1414, and was only finished in 1419. In 1858 the remains of the fountain were removed to the Opera del Duomo, where they are now preserved; a copy of the original by Sarrocchi being erected on the site. After another visit to Lucca in 1422, he returned to Siena, and in March 1425 undertook the contract for the doors of S. Petronio, Bologna. He is known, in following years, to have been to Milan, Verona, Ferrara and Venice; but the rest of his life was chiefly divided between his native city and Bologna. In 1430 he finished the great font of S. Giovanni at Siena, which he had begun in 1417, contributing himself only one of the bas-reliefs, “Zacharias in the Temple,” the others being by Ghiberti, Donatello and other sculptors. Among the work known to have been done by Jacopo, may be mentioned also the reliefs of the predella of the altar of S. Frediano at Lucca (1422); and the Bentivoglio monument which was unfinished at the time of his death on the 20th of October 1438. Jacopo della Quercia’s work exercised a powerful influence on that of the artists of the later Italian Renaissance. He himself reflects not a little of the Gothic spirit, admirably intermixed with some of the best qualities of neo-classicism. He was an artist whose powers have hardly yet received the recognition they undoubtedly deserve.