FANTIN-LATOUR, IGNACE HENRI JEAN THÉODORE (1836-1904), French artist, was born at Grenoble on the 14th of January 1836. He studied first with his father, a pastel painter, and then at the drawing school of Lecoq de Boisbaudran, and later under Couture. He was the friend of Ingres, Dalacroix, Corot, Courbet and others. He exhibited in the Salon of 1861, and many of his more important canvases appeared on its walls in later years, though 1863 found him with Harpignies, Monet, Legros and Whistler in the Salon des Refusés. Whistler introduced him to English artistic circles, and he lived for some time in England, many of his portraits and flower pieces being in English galleries. He died on the 28th of August 1904. His portrait groups, arranged somewhat after the manner of the Dutch masters, are as interesting from their subjects as they are from the artistic point of view. “Hommage à Delacroix” showed portraits of Whistler and Legros, Baudelaire, Champfleury and himself; “Un Atelier à Batignolles” gave portraits of Monet, Manet, Zola and Renoir, and is now in the Luxembourg; “Un Coin de table” presented Verlaine, Rimbaud, Camille Peladan and others; and “Autour du Piano” contained portraits of Chabrier, D’Indy and other musicians. His paintings of flowers are perfect examples of the art, and form perhaps the most famous section of his work in England. In his later years he devoted much attention to lithography, which had occupied him as early as 1862, but his examples were then considered so revolutionary, with their strong lights and black shadows, that the printer refused to execute them. After “L’Anniversaire” in honour of Berlioz in the Salon of 1876, he regularly exhibited lithographs, some of which were excellent examples of delicate portraiture, others being elusive and imaginative drawings illustrative of the music of Wagner (whose cause he championed in Paris as early as 1864), Berlioz, Brahms and other composers. He illustrated Adolphe Jullien’s Wagner (1886) and Berlioz (1888). There are excellent collections of his lithographic work at Dresden, in the British Museum, and a practically complete set given by his widow to the Louvre. Some were also exhibited at South Kensington in 1898-1899, and at the Dutch gallery in 1904.
A catalogue of the lithographs of Fantin-Latour was drawn up by Germain Hédiard in Les Maîtres de la lithographie (1898-1899). A volume of reproductions, in a limited edition, was published (Paris, 1907) as L’Œuvre lithographique de Fantin-Latour. See A. Jullien, Fantin-Latour, sa vie et ses amitiés (Paris, 1909).
FANUM FORTUNAE (mod. Fano), an ancient town of Umbria, Italy, at the point where the Via Flaminia reaches the N.E. coast of Italy. Its name shows that it was of Roman origin, but of its foundation we know nothing. It is first mentioned, with Pisaurum and Ancona, as held by Julius Caesar in 49 B.C. Augustus planted a colony there, and round it constructed a wall (of which some remains exist), as is recorded in the inscription on the triple arch erected in his honour at the entrance to the town (A.D. 9-10), which is still standing. Vitruvius tells us that there was, during Augustus’s lifetime, a temple in his honour and a temple of Jupiter, and describes a basilica of which he himself was the architect. The arch of Augustus bears a subsequent inscription in honour of Constantine, added after his death by L. Turcius Secundus, corrector Flaminiae et Piceni, who also constructed a colonnade above the arch. Several Roman statues and heads, attributable to members of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, were found in the convent of S. Filippo in 1899. These and other objects are now in the municipal museum (E. Brizio in Notizie degli scavi, 1899, 249 seq.). Of the temple of Fortune from which the town took its name no traces have been discovered.
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FAN VAULT, in architecture, a method of vaulting used in the Perpendicular style, of which the earliest example is found in the cloisters of Gloucester cathedral, built towards the close of the 14th century. The ribs are all of one curve and equidistant, and their divergency, resembling that of an open fan, has suggested the name. One of the finest examples, though of later date (1640), is the vault over the staircase of Christ Church, Oxford. For the origin of its development see Vault.
FĀRĀBĪ [Abū Naṣr Muḥammad ibn Tarkhān ul-Fārābī] (ca. 870-950), Arabian philosopher, was born of Turkish stock at Fārāb in Turkestan, where also he spent his youth. Thence he journeyed to Bagdad, where he learned Arabic and gave himself to the study of mathematics, medicine and philosophy, especially the works of Aristotle. Later he went to the court of the Hamdānid Saif addaula, from whom he received a warm welcome and a small pension. Here he lived a quiet if not an ascetic life. He died in Damascus, whither he had gone with his patron. His works are very clear in style, though aphoristic rather than systematic in the treatment of subjects. Unfortunately the success of Avicenna seems to have led to the neglect of much of his work. In Europe his compendium of Aristotle’s Rhetoric was published at Venice, 1484. Two of his smaller works appear in Alpharabii opera omnia (Paris, 1638), and two are translated in F.A. Schmölders’ Documcnta philosophiae Arabum (Bonn, 1836). More recently Fr. Dieterici has published at Leiden: Alfarabi’s philosophische Abhandlungen (1890; German trans. 1892); Alfarabi’s Abhandlung des Musterstaats (1895; German trans. with an essay “Über den Zusammenhang der arabischen und griechischen Philosophie,” 1900); Die Staatsleitung von Alfarabi in German, with an essay on “Das Wesen der arabischen Philosophie” (1904).