COSTA, GIOVANNI (1826–1903), Italian painter, was born in Rome. He fought under Garibaldi in 1848, and served as a volunteer in the war of 1859; and his enthusiasm for Italian unity was actively shown again in 1870, when he was the first to mount the breach in the assault of Rome near the Porta Pia. He had settled meanwhile at Florence, where his fight for the independence of art from worn-out traditions was no less strenuous, and he became known as a landscape-painter of remarkable originality, and of great influence in the return to minute observation of nature. He had many English friends and followers, notably Matthew Ridley Corbet (1850–1902), and Lord Carlisle, and was closely associated with Corot and the Barbizon school. In later years he lived and worked mainly in Rome, where his studio was an important centre. An exhibition of his pictures was held in London in 1904, and he is represented in the Tate Gallery. He died at Rome in 1903.
See also Madame Agresti’s Giovanni Costa (1904).
COSTA, LORENZO (1460–1535), Italian painter, was born at Ferrara, but went in early life to Bologna and ranks with the Bolognese school. In 1438 he painted his famous “Madonna and Child with the Bentivoglio family,” and other frescoes, on the walls of the Bentivoglio chapel in San Giacomo Maggiore, and he followed this with many other works. He was a great friend of Francia, who was much influenced by him. In 1509 he went to Mantua, where his patron was the Marquis Francesco Gonzaga, and he eventually died there. His “Madonna and Child enthroned” is in the National Gallery, London, but his chief works are at Bologna. His sons, Ippolito (1506–1561) and Girolamo, were also painters, and so was Girolamo’s son Lorenzo the younger (1537–1583).
COSTA, SIR MICHAEL ANDREW AGNUS (1808–1884), British musical conductor and composer, the son of Cavalière Pasquale Costa, a Spaniard, was born at Naples on the 14th of February 1808. Here he became at an early age a scholar at the Royal College of Music. His cantata L’Immagine was composed when he was fifteen. In 1826 he wrote his first opera Il Delitto Punito; in 1827 another opera Il sospetto funesto. To this period belong also his oratorio La Passione, a grand Mass for four voices, a Dixit Doninus, and three symphonies. The opera Il Carcere d’Ildegonda was composed in 1828 for the Teatro Nuovo, and in 1829 Costa wrote his Malvina for Barbaja, the impresario of San Carlo. In this latter year he visited Birmingham to conduct Zingarelli’s Cantata Sacra, a setting of some verses from Isaiah ch. xii. Instead, however, of conducting, he sang the tenor part. In 1830 he settled in London, having a connexion with the King’s theatre. His ballet Kenilworth was written in 1831, the ballet Une Heure à Naples in 1832, and the ballet Sir Huon (composed for Taglioni) in 1833. In this latter year he wrote his famous quartet Ecco quel fiero istante. Malek Adhel, an opera, was produced in Paris in 1837. In 1842 he wrote the ballet music of Alma for Cerito, and in 1844 his opera Don Carlos was produced in London. Costa became a naturalized Englishman and received the honour of knighthood in 1869. He conducted the opera at Her Majesty’s from 1832 till 1846, when he seceded to the Italian Opera at Covent Garden; he was conductor of the Philharmonic Society from 1846 to 1854, of the Sacred Harmonic Society from 1848, and of the Birmingham festival from 1849. In 1855 Costa wrote Eli, and in 1864 Naaman, both for Birmingham. Meanwhile he had conducted the Bradford (1853) and Handel festivals (1857–1880), and the Leeds festivals from 1874 to 1880. On the 29th of April 1884 he died at Brighton. Costa was the great conductor of his day, but both his musical and his human sympathies were somewhat limited; his compositions have passed into oblivion, with the exception of the least admirable of them—his arrangement of the national anthem.
COSTAKI, ANTHOPOULOS (1835–1902), Turkish pasha, was born in 1835. He became a professor at the Turkish naval college; then entered the legal branch of the Turkish service, rising to the post of procureur impérial at the court of cassation. He was governor-general of Crete; and in 1895 was appointed Ottoman ambassador in London, a post which he continued to hold until his death at Constantinople in 1902. He bore throughout his career the reputation of an intelligent and upright public servant.
COSTANZO, ANGELO DI (c. 1507–1591), Italian historian and poet, was born at Naples about 1507. He lived in a literary circle, and fell in love with the beautiful Vittoria Colonna. His great work, Le Istorie del regno di Napoli dal 1250 fino al 1498, first appeared at Naples in 1572, and was the fruit of thirty or forty years’ labour; but nine more years were devoted to the task before it was issued in its final form at Aquila (1581). It is still one of the best histories of Naples, and the style is distinguished by clearness, simplicity and elegance. The Rime of di Costanzo are remarkable for finical taste, for polish and frequent beauty of expression, and for strict obedience to the poetical canons of his time.
See G. Tiraboschi, Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. vii. (Florence, 1812).
COSTA RICA, a republic of Central America, bounded on the N. by Nicaragua, E. by the Caribbean Sea, S.E. and S. by Panama, S.W., W. and N.W. by the Pacific Ocean. (For map, see Central America.) The territory thus enclosed has an area of about 18,500 sq. m., and may be roughly described as an elevated tableland, intersected by lofty mountain ranges, with their main axis trending from N.W. to S.E. It is fringed, along the coasts, by low-lying marshes and lagoons, alternating with tracts of rich soil and wastes of sand.
Physical Description.—The northern frontier, drawn 2 m. S. of the southern shores of the river San Juan and of Lake Nicaragua, terminates at Salinas Bay on the Pacific; its southern frontier skirts the valley of the Sixola or Tiliri, strikes south-east along the crests of the Talamanca Mountains as far as 9° N., and then turns sharply south, ending in Burica Point. The monotonous Atlantic littoral is unbroken by any large inlet or estuary, and thus contrasts in a striking manner with the varied outlines of the Pacific coast, which includes the three bold promontories of Nicoya, Golfo Dulce and Burica, besides the broad sweep of Coronada Bay and several small harbours. The Gulf of Nicoya, a shallow landlocked inlet, containing a whole archipelago of richly-wooded islets, derives its name from Nicoya, an Indian chief who, with his tribe, was here converted to Christianity in the 16th century. It is famous for its purple-yielding murex, pearls and mother-of-pearl. The Golfo Dulce has an average depth of 100 fathoms and contains no islands. Two volcanic Cordilleras or mountain chains, separated from one another by the central plateau of San José and Cartago, traverse the interior of Costa Rica, and form a single watershed, often precipitous on its Pacific slope, but descending more gradually towards the Atlantic, where there is a broad expanse of plain in the north-east. The more northerly range, in which volcanic disturbances on a great scale have been comparatively recent, extends transversely across the country, from a point a little south of Salinas Bay, to the headland of Carreta, the southern extremity of the Atlantic seaboard, also known as Monkey Point. Its direction changes from south-east to east-south-east opposite to the entrance into the Gulf of Nicoya, where it is cut into two sections by a depression some 20 m. wide. At first it is rather a succession of isolated volcanic cones than a continuous ridge, the most conspicuous peaks being Orosi (5185 ft.), the four-crested Rincon de la Vieja (4500), Miravalles (4698) and Tenorio (6800). In this region it is known as the Sierra de Tilaran. Then succeed the Cerros de los Guatusos, a highland stretching for more than 50 m. without a single volcano. Poas (8895), the scene of a violent eruption in 1834, begins a fresh series of igneous peaks, some with flooded craters, some with a constant escape of smoke and vapour. From Irazú (11,200), the culminating point of the range, both oceans and the whole of Costa Rica are visible; its altitude exceeds that of Aneto, the highest point in the Pyrenees, but so gradual is its acclivity that the summit can easily be reached by a man on horseback. Turialba (10,910), adjoining Irazú on the east, was in eruption in 1866. Its name, though probably of Indian origin, is sometimes written Turrialba, and connected with the Latin Turris Alba, “White Tower.” The more southerly of
