Picchianti, Giovanni Do.uexico, an Italian de- signer and engraver, was born at Florence about 1670. He was instructed in the rudiments of drawing by Giovanni Battista Foggini, and afterwards learned en- graving. Picchianti, with Lorenzini, Mogalli, and other artists, was employed in engraving a set of plates from pictures in the Florentine ( Jallery. Among other works of his are the following: The Madonna della Seggiola, after Raffaelle; The Virgin and Infant Jesus, with St. John, after Anthony Caracci ; The Tribute-Money, after Titian; The Virgin and Infant, after Titian : Abraham sending away Ilagar, after P. da Cortona. See Spooner, Biog. Hist, of the Fine Arts, ii, 692.
Piccinardi, Serafino, an Italian theologian of some note, was born at Padua in 1634. He embraced the rule of St. Dominic ; professed theology at Bologna, Verona, Genoa, and Milan ; and was called upon, in 1669, to occupy the chair of metaphysics at the university of his native place. According to Papadopoli, he died
in 1686 at Brescia; according to Echard, in 1695. He published, Philosophice dogmatical peripateticce Chris- tiana: lib. ix (Padua, 1671-1676, 2 vols. 4to) : — De appro- bation doctrinm St. Thomce lib. vii (ibid. 1683, 3 vols, fol.): — and Prcede si hiatus (ibid. 1686, 4 to). — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Generate, xl, 55.
Piccini, Giacomo, an Italian engraver, was born at Venice in 1617. It is not known by whom he was - instructed. He engraved a set of thirty portraits of the principal painters of the Venetian school, for the account of their lives by Ridolfi, published in 1648. He also engraved a few plates after the Italian masters, among which are The Holy Family, after P. Liberi ; Judith milk the Head of Holof ernes at Iter Feet, and The Holy Fam- ily, after Titian. His plates are executed in a stiff, dis- agreeable style. He was living in 1669. See Spooner, Biog. Hist, of the Fine Arts, ii, 692.
Piccioni, Matteo, a painter and engraver, was born at Ancona, according to Nagler, in 1615. Little is known of him as a painter, save that he flourished at Rome, and was elected a member of the Academy of St. Luke in 1655. Lanzi says he was a fellow-student of Giovanni Antonio Galli. Bartsch gives a list of twenty-three prints by him, among which are the following : St. Luke painting the Virgin, after Raffaelle ; The A doration of the Shepherds, after P. Veronese ; The Holy Family, after P. Veronese ; The Virgin and Infant Jesus, with St. John, after A. Camassei; The Exposing of Moses in the Waters of the Nile, after A. Camassei. See Spooner, Biog. Hist. of the Fine Arts, ii, 692.
Piccola, Niccola (or Niccola Laviccola), a Sicilian painter, was born at Crotona, in Calabria Ultra, in 1730. He studied under Francesco Mancini at Rome, and acquired considerable reputation. He executed several works for the churches in that city, and deco- rated the cupola of a chapel in the Vatican, which was so much esteemed that it was afterwards copied in mosaic. Many paintings by Piccola are at Veletri, but none of bis works are specilied. He died in 1790. See Spooner, Biog. Hist, of the Fine Arts, ii, 692.
Piccolomini, Alessandro, one of the most dis- tinguished of Italian prelates of the 16th century, was bom at Siena in 1508. He sprang from the same fam- ily as pope Pius II (q. v.), and by his piety, modesty, and scholarship gained great renown ; but no events of his life are particularly worth recording. He deserves to be remembered for the wide extent of his writings, and the esteem in which they were held by his contem- poraries and immediate followers. He died in 1578. He was of an original turn of mind, and his writings are almost all in Italian, so that he is among the earliest of those who endeavored to raise the character of ver- nacular literature by treating all branches of knowledge in modern tongues. His commentaries on Aristotle were prized for their good-sense, and for their abandon- ment of most of the scholasticisms by which that phi- losophy was disfigured by commentators. He advocated in 1578 the reformation of the calendar, which was af- terwards adopted. In his book on the fixed stars and the sphere he adopts the mode of designating the stars by letters — a small matter, but one which makes the greater part of the immortality of Bayer, and to which the diagrams of Piccolomini establish his prior claim. His works are of a most miscellaneous character — as- tronomy, physics, comedies, sonnets, morals, divinity, and commentaries on Aristotle. De Thou speaks in strong terms of the rare union of diversity and depth which his acquirements presented. For a list of his most important works, and an estimate of them, see Fa- biani. Vita d' A less. Piccolomini (Vienna, 1749, 1759, 8vo) ; Ughelli, Italia Sacra, s. v. ; Tiraboschi, Storia della letter, ital. vol. vii, pt. i, p. 506 ; Niceron, Me- moii-es, vol. xxiii, s. v. — Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gen. s. v.
Piccolomini, Francesco, an Italian philosopher, father of the preceding, was born in 1520 at Siena. At
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Padua, where he pursued his studies, he was condisciple I of Felix Peretti, who became pope under the name of Sixtus V, and who boasted of baring worsted him in public disputation. He professed philosophy at Siena. Macerata, Perugia (1550), and anally at Padua Bis advanced age compelled him, in 1601, to leare the latter city and retire to Siena He strove both by his lessons and by bis writings to restore the philosophy of Plato, and to Bhow that it is compatible after all with the principles of Aristotle. He died at Siena in 1604. He left, Universa philosopkia de moribus (Venice, 1583, lul.i : the editions of Frankfort (1601,161 1, 8vo) contain besides, under the title of Comes politicus, an answer to the attacks ofZabarella: — Libri dt scientia nalura V (Frankf. 1597, 1627, tto), which is a treatise (Hi natural philosophy : -Dt artt dejiniendi et eleganter discurrendi (ibid. 1600, 4to): — Commentaria in Aris- totelem Dt Ortu et Interitu, Dt anima et De Coelo (Mentz, 1608, 8vo); each of these commentaries was also published separately. -Hoefer, Nouv. Bi rule, xl, 07.