For the life and works of Guido Reni, see Bolognini, Vita di Guido Reni (1839); Passeri, Vite de’ pittori; and Malvasia, Felsina Pittrice; also Lanzi, Storia pitiorica.
(W. M. R.)
GUIENNE, an old French province which corresponded roughly to the Aquitania Secunda of the Romans and the archbishopric of Bordeaux. In the 12th century it formed with Gascony the duchy of Aquitaine, which passed under the dominion of the kings of England by the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II.; but in the 13th, through the conquests of Philip Augustus, Louis VIII. and Louis IX., it was confined within the narrower limits fixed by the treaty of Paris (1259). It is at this point that Guienne becomes distinct from Aquitaine. It then comprised the Bordelais (the old countship of Bordeaux), the Bazadais, part of Périgord, Limousin, Quercy and Rouergue, the Agenais ceded by Philip III. (the Bold) to Edward I. (1279), and (still united with Gascony) formed a duchy extending from the Charente to the Pyrenees. This duchy was held on the terms of homage to the French kings, an onerous obligation; and both in 1296 and 1324 it was confiscated by the kings of France on the ground that there had been a failure in the feudal duties. At the treaty of Brétigny (1360) Edward III. acquired the full sovereignty of the duchy of Guienne, together with Aunis, Saintonge, Angoumois and Poitou. The victories of du Guesclin and Gaston Phœbus, count of Foix, restored the duchy soon after to its 13th-century limits. In 1451 it was conquered and finally united to the French crown by Charles VII. In 1469 Louis XI. gave it in exchange for Champagne and Brie to his brother Charles, duke of Berry, after whose death in 1472 it was again united to the royal dominion. Guienne then formed a government which from the 17th century onwards was united with Gascony. The government of Guienne and Gascony, with its capital at Bordeaux, lasted till the end of the ancien régime. Under the Revolution the departments formed from Guienne proper were those of Gironde, Lot-et-Garonne, Dordogne, Lot, Aveyron and the chief part of Tarn-et-Garonne.
GUIGNES, JOSEPH DE (1721-1800), French orientalist, was born at Pontoise on the 19th of October 1721. He succeeded Fourmont at the Royal Library as secretary interpreter of the Eastern languages. A Mémoire historique sur l’origine des Huns et des Turcs, published by de Guignes in 1748, obtained his admission to the Royal Society of London in 1752, and he became an associate of the French Academy of Inscriptions in 1754. Two years later he began to publish his learned and laborious Histoire générale des Huns, des Mongoles, des Turcs et des autres Tartares occidentaux (1756-1758); and in 1757 he was appointed to the chair of Syriac at the Collège de France. He maintained that the Chinese nation had originated in Egyptian colonization, an opinion to which, in spite of every argument, he obstinately clung. He died in Paris in 1800. The Histoire had been translated into German by Dähnert (1768-1771). De Guignes left a son, Christian Louis Joseph (1759-1845), who, after learning Chinese from his father, went as consul to Canton, where he spent seventeen years. On his return to France he was charged by the government with the work of preparing a Chinese-French-Latin dictionary (1813). He was also the author of a work of travels (Voyages à Pékin, Manille, et l’île de France, 1808).
See Quérard, La France littéraire, where a list of the memoirs contributed by de Guignes to the Journal des savants is given.
GUILBERT, YVETTE (1869- ), French diseuse, was born in Paris. She served for two years until 1885 in the Magasin du Printemps, when, on the advice of the journalist, Edmond Stoullig, she trained for the stage under Landrol. She made her début at the Bouffes du Nord, then played at the Variétés, and in 1890 she received a regular engagement at the Eldorado to sing a couple of songs at the beginning of the performance. She also sang at the Ambassadeurs. She soon won an immense vogue by her rendering of songs drawn from Parisian lower-class life, or from the humours of the Latin Quarter, “Quatre z’étudiants” and the “Hôtel du numéro trois” being among her early triumphs. Her adoption of an habitual yellow dress and long black gloves, her studied simplicity of diction, and her ingenuous delivery of songs charged with risqué meaning, made her famous. She owed something to M. Xanrof, who for a long time composed songs especially for her, and perhaps still more to Aristide Bruant, who wrote many of her argot songs. She made successful tours in England, Germany and America, and was in great request as an entertainer in private houses. In 1895 she married Dr M. Schiller. In later years she discarded something of her earlier manner, and sang songs of the “pompadour” and the “crinoline” period in costume. She published the novels La Vedette and Les Demi-vieilles, both in 1902.