See V. Bindi, Monumenti degli Abruzzi (Naples, 1889, 690 sqq.), and for discoveries in the neighbourhood see A. de Nino in Notizie degli scavi (1884), 431.
(T. As.)
LANCRET, NICOLAS (1660-1743), French painter, was born in Paris on the 22nd of January 1660, and became a brilliant depicter of light comedy which reflected the tastes and manners of French society under the regent Orleans. His first master was Pierre d’Ulin, but his acquaintance with and admiration for Watteau induced him to leave d’Ulin for Gillot, whose pupil Watteau had been. Two pictures painted by Lancret and exhibited on the Place Dauphine had a great success, which laid the foundation of his fortune, and, it is said, estranged Watteau, who had been complimented as their author. Lancret’s work cannot now, however, be taken for that of Watteau, for both in drawing and in painting his touch, although intelligent, is dry, hard and wanting in that quality which distinguished his great model; these characteristics are due possibly in part to the fact that he had been for some time in training under an engraver. The number of his paintings (of which over eighty have been engraved) is immense; he executed a few portraits and attempted historical composition, but his favourite subjects were balls, fairs, village weddings, &c. The British Museum possesses an admirable series of studies by Lancret in red chalk, and the National Gallery, London, shows four paintings—the “Four Ages of Man” (engraved by Desplaces and l’Armessin), cited by d’Argenville amongst the principal works of Lancret. In 1719 he was received as Academician, and became councillor in 1735; in 1741 he married a grandchild of Boursault, author of Aesop at Court. He died on the 14th of September 1743.
See d’Argenville, Vies des peintres; and Ballot de Sovot, Éloge de M. Lancret (1743, new ed. 1874).
LAND, the general term for that part of the earth’s surface which is solid and dry as opposed to sea or water. The word is common to Teutonic languages, mainly in the same form and with essentially the same meaning. The Celtic cognate forms are Irish lann, Welsh llan, an enclosure, also in the sense of “church,” and so of constant occurrence in Welsh place-names, Cornish lan and Breton lann, health, which has given the French lande, an expanse or tract of sandy waste ground. The ultimate root is unknown. From its primary meaning have developed naturally the various uses of the word, for a tract of ground or country viewed either as a political, geographical or ethnographical division of the earth, as property owned by the public or state or by a private individual, or as the rural as opposed to the urban or the cultivated as opposed to the built on part of the country; of particular meanings may be mentioned that of a building divided into tenements or flats, the divisions being known as “houses,” a Scottish usage, and also that of a division of a ploughed field marked by the irrigating channels, hence transferred to the smooth parts of the bore of a rifle between the grooves of the rifling.
For the physical geography of the land, as the solid portion of the earth’s surface, see [Geography]. For land as the subject of cultivation see [Agriculture] and [Soil], also [Reclamation of Land]. For the history of the holding or tenure of land see [Village Communities] and [Feudalism]; a particular form of land tenure is dealt with under [Métayage]. The article [Agrarian Laws] deals with the disposal of the public land (Ager publicus) in Ancient Rome, and further information with regard to the part played by the land question in Roman history will be found under [Rome]: § History. The legal side of the private ownership of land is treated under [Real Property] and [Conveyancing] (see also [Landlord and Tenant], and [Land Registration]).
LANDAU, a town in the Bavarian Palatinate, on the Queich, lying under the eastern slope of the Hardt Mountains, 32 m. by rail S.W. from Mannheim, at the junction of lines to Neustadt an der Hardt, Weissenburg and Saarbrücken. Pop. (1905) 17,165. Among its buildings are the Gothic Evangelical church, dating from 1285; the chapel of St Catherine built in 1344; the church of the former Augustinian monastery, dating from 1405; and the Augustinian monastery itself, founded in 1276 and now converted into a brewery. There are manufactures of cigars, beer, hats, watches, furniture and machines, and a trade in wine, fruit and cereals. Large cattle-markets are held here. Landau was founded in 1224, becoming an imperial city fifty years later. This dignity was soon lost, as in 1317 it passed to the bishopric of Spires and in 1331 to the Palatinate, recovering its former position in 1511. Captured eight times during the Thirty Years’ War the town was ceded to France by the treaty of Westphalia in 1648, although with certain ill-defined reservations. In 1679 Louis XIV. definitely took possession of Landau. Its fortifications were greatly strengthened; nevertheless it was twice taken by the Imperialists and twice recovered by the French during the Spanish Succession War. In 1815 it was given to Austria and in the following year to Bavaria. The fortifications were finally dismantled in 1871.