of Naples, the enemy of the house of Sforza, he planned the subjugation of the vassal lords of Romagna, and Giovanni, feeling his position insecure, left Rome for Pesaro with his wife. By Christmas 1495 they were back in Rome; the pope had all his children around him, and celebrated the carnival with a series of magnificent festivities. But he decided that he had done with Sforza, and annulled the marriage on the ground of the husband’s impotence (March 1497). In order to cement his alliance with Naples, he married Lucrezia to Alphonso of Aragon, duke of Bisceglie, a handsome youth of eighteen, related to the Neapolitan king. But he too realized the fickleness of the Borgias’ favour when Alexander backed up Louis XII. of France in the latter’s schemes for the conquest of Naples. Bisceglie fled from Rome, fearing for his life, and the pope sent Lucrezia to receive the homage of the city of Spoleto as governor. On her return to Rome in 1499, her husband, who really loved her, was induced to join her once more. A year later he was murdered by the order of her brother Cesare. After the death of Bisceglie, Lucrezia retired to Nepi, and then returned to Rome, where she acted for a time as regent during Alexander’s absence. The latter now was anxious for a union between his daughter and Alphonso, son and heir to Ercole d’Este, duke of Ferrara. The negotiations were somewhat difficult, as neither Alphonso nor his father was anxious for a connexion with the house of Borgia, and Lucrezia’s own reputation was not unblemished. However, by bribes and threats the opposition was overcome, and in September 1501 the marriage was celebrated by proxy with great magnificence in Rome. On Lucrezia’s arrival at Ferrara she won over her reluctant husband by her youthful charm (she was only twenty-two), and from that time forth she led a peaceful life, about which there was hardly a breath of scandal. On the death of Ercole in 1505, her husband became duke, and she gathered many learned men, poets and artists at her court, among whom were Ariosto, Cardinal Bembo, Aldus Manutius the printer, and the painters Titian and Dosso Dossi. She devoted herself to the education of her children and to charitable works; the only tragedy connected with this period of her life is the murder of Ercole Strozzi, who is said to have admired her and fallen a victim to Alphonso’s jealousy. She died on the 24th of June 1519, leaving three sons and a daughter by the duke of Ferrara, besides one son Rodrigo by the duke of Bisceglie, and possibly another of doubtful paternity. She seems to have been a woman of very mediocre talents, and only played a part in history because she was the daughter of Alexander VI. and the sister of Cesare Borgia. While she was in Rome she was probably no better and no worse than the women around her, but there is no serious evidence for the charges of incest with her father and brothers which were brought against her by the scandal-mongers of the time.
See the bibliographies for Alexander VI. and Borgia, Cesare; and especially F. Gregorovius’s Lucrezia Borgia (Stuttgart, 1874), the standard work on the subject; also W. Gilbert’s Lucrezia Borgia, Duchess of Ferrara (London, 1869), which, while containing much information, is quite without historic value; and G. Campori’s “Una Vittima della Storia, Lucrezia Borgia,” in the Nuova Antologia (August 31, 1866), which aims at the rehabilitation of Lucrezia. (L. V.*)
BORGLUM, SOLON HANNIBAL (1868– ), American
sculptor, was born in Ogden, Utah, on the 22nd of December 1868,
the son of a Danish wood-carver. He studied under Louis F.
Rebisso in the Cincinnati art school in 1895–1897, and under
Frémiet in Paris. He took as his chief subjects incidents of
western life, cowboys and Indians, with which he was familiar
from his years on the ranch; notably “Lassoing Wild Horses,”
“Stampeding Wild Horses,” “Last Round-up,” “On the
Border of White Man’s Land,” and “Burial on the Plains.”
His elder brother, Gutzon Borglum (b. 1867), also showed
himself an artist of some originality.
BORGOGNONE, AMBROGIO (fl. 1473–1524), Italian painter
of the Milanese school, whose real name was Ambrogio Stefani
da Fossano, was approximately contemporary with Leonardo da
Vinci, but represented, at least during a great part of his career,
the tendencies of Lombard art anterior to the arrival of that
master—the tendencies which he had adopted and perfected
from the hands of his predecessors Foppa and Zenale. We are
not precisely informed of the dates either of the death or the birth
of Borgognone, who was born at Fossano in Piedmont, and
whose appellation was due to his artistic affiliation to the Burgundian
school. His fame is principally associated with that of
one great building, the Certosa, or church and convent of the
Carthusians at Pavia, for which he worked much and in many
different ways. It is certain, indeed, that there is no truth in the
tradition which represents him as having designed, in 1473, the
celebrated façade of the Certosa itself. His residence there
appears to have been of eight years’ duration, from 1486, when
he furnished the designs of the figures of the virgin, saints and
apostles for the choir-stalls, executed in tarsia or inlaid wood
work by Bartolommeo Pola, till 1494, when he returned to Milan.
Only one known picture, an altar-piece at the church San
Eustorgio, can with probability be assigned to a period of his
career earlier than 1486. For two years after his return to
Milan he worked at the church of San Satiro in that city. From
1497 he was engaged for some time in decorating with paintings
the church of the Incoronata in the neighbouring town at Lodi.
Our notices of him thenceforth are few and far between. In
1508 he painted for a church in Bergamo; in 1512 his signature
appears in a public document of Milan; in 1524—and this is our
last authentic record—he painted a series of frescoes illustrating
the life of St Sisinius in the portico of San Simpliciano at Milan.
Without having produced any works of signal power or beauty,
Borgognone is a painter of marked individuality. He holds an
interesting place in the most interesting period of Italian art.
The National Gallery, London, has two fair examples of his work—the
separate fragments of a silk banner painted for the Certosa,
and containing the heads of two kneeling groups severally of men
and women; and a large altar-piece of the marriage of St Catherine,
painted for the chapel of Rebecchino near Pavia. But to judge
of his real powers and peculiar ideals—his system of faint and
clear colouring, whether in fresco, tempera or oil; his somewhat
slender and pallid types, not without something that reminds us
of northern art in their Teutonic sentimentality as well as their
Teutonic fidelity of portraiture; the conflict of his instinctive
love of placidity and calm with a somewhat forced and borrowed
energy in figures where energy is demanded, his conservatism in
the matter of storied and minutely diversified backgrounds—to
judge of these qualities of the master as they are, it is necessary
to study first the great series of his frescoes and altar-pieces at
the Certosa, and next those remains of later frescoes and altar-pieces
at Milan and Lodi, in which we find the influence of
Leonardo and of the new time mingling with, but not expelling,
his first predilections.
BORGO SAN DONNINO, a town and episcopal see of Emilia,
Italy, in the province of Parma, 14 m. N.W. by rail from the
town of Parma. Pop. (1901) town, 6251; commune, 12,109. It
occupies the site of the ancient Fidentia, on the Via Aemilia; no
doubt, as its name shows, of Roman origin. Here M. Lucullus
defeated the democrats under Carbo in 82 B.C. It was independent
under Vespasian, but seems soon to have become a village
dependent on Parma. Its present name comes from the martyrdom
of S. Domninus under Maximian in A.D. 304. The cathedral,
erected in honour of this saint, is one of the finest and
best-preserved Lombardo-Romanesque churches of the 11th–13th
centuries in north Italy. The upper part of the façade is incomplete,
but the lower, with its three portals and sculptures, is very
fine; the interior is simple and well-proportioned, and has not
been spoilt by restorations. For the bénitier, a work of the early
11th century, see Rassegna d’Arte, 1905, 180. Not far from the
town is the small church of S. Antonio del Viennese, a 13th-century
structure in brick (ib., 1906, 22). The Palazzo Comunale,
in the Gothic-Lombard style, is a work of the 14th century.
Borgo S. Donnino is an important centre for the produce and
cattle of Emilia. (T. As.)
BORGU, or Barba, an inland country of West Africa. The
western part is included in the French colony of Dahomey (q.v.);
the eastern division forms the Borgu province of the British
protectorate of Nigeria. Borgu is bounded N.E. and E. by the
