Pinto, Isaac, a Portuguese moralist of Jewish de- scent, was born in 1715. He first settled at Bordeaux, then went to Holland. He was a learned man. but commenced to write only at the age of about fifty, when he gained some reputation by defending against Vol- taire his Jewish brethren, or at hast, among them, the Portuguese and Spanish .lews. He wrote in French. We Belecl among his writings, Essai sur A luxt (Amster. 1762, l2mo). He thus defines his subject: "Luxury consists in this, that the houses we dwell in, the clotlus we put on. the victuals we live on, the equi- pages we use. are so expensive in proportion of our means, that we can no longer discharge our duties to- ward- our families, friends, the country, and the poor" pour la nation Juivt ; Reflections critiques, etc. [ibid. 1762, l2mo | ). Pen ire, the instructor of the deaf- mutes, was the editor of this work. The author sent a cops- of it to Voltaire, who thauked him, and promised to notice it in the next edition of his works, which, however, he failed to do. Guenee reprinted the "Apol- ogy" as a kind of introduction to his Lettres de '/'" IqUt S
Juifs Portugal*:— Du jw d* Cartes (1768,8vo),a let- ter to Diderot: Traits d< la Circulation et du Credit (ibid. 1771, 177::. 1781, 8vo), translate,! into English and ( lerman -.—Precis </«.-• arguments contn les mat< ria- lisfi La Haye, 1774, 1776, 8vo). The complete/works of Pinto were published in French I Amster. 1771, 8vo), and in German (Leipsic, 1777, 8vo). Pinto died Aug. 14, 1787, at La Have. Hoefer, Nouv. Biog. Gen. xl, 282. Pinto, Josias, ben-Joseph, a Jewish rabbi, was horn at the beginning of the 17ih century at Lisbon, and settled al Damascus. He is also called r_~. i. i . Rabbi Josias Pinto, and wrote Z-'.-V "X". " Lighl of tin- Eyes," annotations on the Fountain of Jacob, Z-i- -,-:', hy R. Jakob ibn-Chabib (Venice. 1643, and often since): """- r::. "Purified Silver," a diffuse
expo it i n the Pentateuch (ibid. 1628) : -~n~; TOZ.
"Choice Silver," a succinct exposition on Genesis and Exodus: r"~j r~r. "Proved Silver," a commentary on Pre i rba I Lmsterd. 171 1 35): r"i\ legal decisions (Venice, 1694 ; Smyrna, 1756). See FUrst, BibLJud. iii. 104; De Rossi, Dizionario storico degli out
(Germ.transLby Hamburger), p. 265; Wolf, Bibi. Hebr. i, 399sq. ; iii, 281 sq.; Undo, Visf. of tkt Jewi i and Portugal, p. 336; Etheridge, Introduction to Hebrew Lit. p. 137; Finn, Sephardim, p. 462; Steinschneider, Catalogus Libr. Hebr. in Bibl. Bodl. p. 1547. (B. P.)
Pinto de Fonseca. Emmanuel, grand-master of the Order of Malta, born May 24, L681, belonged to one of the first families of Portugal. Elected grand- master Jan. l*. 1741, after discharging the functions of \ ice-chancellor and bailli de grao . he won by his firm- ness of conduct the esteem ol the sovereigns of Europe, to whom he had been useful. It was during his mas- tery that a widespread conspiracy against the order was discovered, June 25, 1742. A number of Turkish prisoners, among them Osman Pasha, governor of Rhodes, were to destroy the knights by the sword and by poison, and take possession of .Malta with the aid of the Turkish fleet, with which they were iii scent cor- respondence. In September, 1760, a numbi roft Ihristian slaves forming the crew of a tirst-rate ship earn ing a valuable freight, and on hoard of which Mi Ik m< t Pasha was going to Stanchio to coll< cl the taxes, made tin m- selves masters of the ship, brought it to Malta, and shared tie- spoils with the knights. The sultan pre- pared to wreak terrible vengeance on the order, when Louis XV. kin-- of France, had the vessel redd his own cost ami restored to the padishab, Dec. 10, 1761. Pinto suppressed (1769) the Jesuits in all the dominions of the order, hut granted them an indem- nity in 'he form of life-rents. In 177-J he obtained from king Stanislaus -August of Poland the restitution of considerable donations which had keen taken from the order. He died Jan. 24, 1773.— Hoefer. Now. Biog. Generale, xl, 281.
Pinturicchio, Bernardino, an Italian paint r of much celebrity, was horn at Perugia in lh'.!. His real name was Betii Biagi, hut he was often called Sordicchio, from his deafness and insignificant appear- ance, hut Pinturicchio was his usual name. He was a disciple of l'iotro PeruginO ( q. V.). His earlier works no longer exist. He never perfected himself in the use of oil mediums, hut was confined almost entirely to tempera, lie went to Rome, and probably labored with Perugino in the sistine Chapel. He afterwards executed almost numberless frescos in the churches and palaces of that city. Hi- was tir.-t patronized by th< Roveri, and then by the Piccolomini. For Alex- ander VI he decorated the Apartamento Borgia in the Vatican ; five of these rooms still remain in th< ir original stair. His pictures in the < lastle of S. Angelo have been completely destroyed. During his engage mentsinRome he went twice to < )r\ icto. tor the execution of commis- sions there. The amount of his labors was surprising,
hul is explained hy his greal facility of execution and
the employment of many assistants. He was not orig- inal in his compositions; he loved landscapes, hut he Cumbered them with ton much detail: his f: virgins, infants, ami angels have a certain coarseness; he used too much pit and ornamentation : his draperies were full, hut often badly cast : hi-- works are either too gaudy or very sombre, no pleasing medium seeming to suggest itself to him; hi- flesh has the red outlines of the earliest tempera; and yet with all these faults hi' painted at a time when tie- greal precepts ofarl were well known, and his works an- good exponents of skilled labor in art without any striking or exceptional power in the artist It i- scarcely possible here to give more than a li-t of the churches in which he painted: ill Lome they wen- the Araceli, S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and S. Onofrio. In 1496 he returned to Perugia, and undertook an altar-piece