Spedale of S. Maria Novella in Florence) helped to lead the whole of Florentine painting into new channels. From him, most probably, he acquired the love of landscape and the intimate knowledge of the growth of flowers and of animal life. The influence of Hugo van der Goes is especially apparent in the “Adoration of the Shepherds,” at the Berlin Museum. He had the gift of a fertile fantastic imagination, which, as a result of a journey to Rome in 1482 with his master, Rosselli, became directed towards the myths of classic antiquity. He proves himself a true child of the Renaissance in such pictures as the “Death of Procris,” at the National Gallery, the “Mars and Venus,” at the Berlin Gallery, the “Perseus and Andromeda” series, at the Uffizi in Florence, and the “Hylas and the Nymphs” belonging to Mr Benson. If, as we are told by Vasari, he spent the last years of his life in gloomy retirement, the change was probably due to Savonarola, under whose influence he turned his attention once more to religious art. The “Immaculate Conception,” at the Uffizi, and the “Holy Family,” at Dresden, best illustrate the religious fervour to which he was stimulated by the stern preacher. With the exception of the landscape background in Rossell1's fresco of the “Sermon on the Mount,” in the Sistine Chapel, we have no record of any fresco work from his brush. On the other hand, he enjoyed a great reputation as a portrait painter, though the only known examples that can be definitely ascribed to him are the portrait of a warrior, at the National Gallery, (No. 895), the so-called “Bella Simonetta,” at Chantilly, the portraits of Giuliano di San Gallo and his father, at the Hague, and a head of a youth, at Dulwich. Vasari relates that Piero excelled in designing pageants and triumphal processions for the pleasure-loving youths of Florence, and gives a vivid description of one such procession at the end of the carnival of 1507, which illustrated the triumph of death. Piero di Cosimo exercised considerable influence upon his fellow pupils Albertinelli and Bartolommeo della Porta and was the master of Andrea del Sarto. Examples of his work are also to be found at the Louvre in Paris, the Harrach and Liechtenstein collections in Vienna, the Borghese Gallery in Rome, the Spedale degli Innocenti in Florence, and in the collections of Mr John Burke and Colonel Cornwallis West in London. A “Magdalen” from his brush was added to the National Gallery of Rome in 1907.
See Piero di Cosimo, by F. Knapp (Halle, 1899); Piero di Cosimo, by H. Haberfeld (Breslau, 1901).
PIERRE, the capital of South Dakota, U.S.A., and the county-seat of Hughes county, situated on the east bank of the Missouri river, opposite the mouth of the Bad river, about 185 m. N.W. of Yankton. Pop (1905) 2794, (1910) 3656. Pierre is served by the Chicago & North-Western railway; the Missouri is navigable here, but river traffic has been practically abandoned. Among the principal buildings are the state capitol (1909) and the post office building. Pierre has a public library, and is the seat of the Pierre Industrial School (co-educational, opened in 1890), a government boarding school (non-reservation) for Indian children. The city has a large trade in livestock, and is a centre for the mining districts of the Black Hills and for a grain-growing country. Natural gas is used for lighting, heating and power. A fur-trading post, Fort La Framboise, as built in 1817 by a French fur-trader (from whom it took its name) at the mouth of the Teton or Little Missouri river (now called the Bad River), on or near the site of the present village of Fort Pierre (pop. in 1910, 792). In 1822 Fort Tecumseh was built about 2 m. up-stream by the Columbia Fur Company, which turned it over in 1827 to the American Fur Company. The washing away of the river bank caused the abandonment of this post and the erection about a mile farther up-stream, and a short distance west of the river, of Fort Pierre Chouteau (later called Fort Pierre), occupied in 1832, and named in honour of Pierre Chouteau, jun. (1789-1865).[1] For twenty years thereafter Fort Pierre was the chief fur-trading depot of the Upper Missouri country. In 1855 the United States government bought the post building and other property for $45,000, and laid out around them a military reservation of about 270 sq. m. The fort was the headquarters of General William S. Harney (1800-1889) in his expedition against the Sioux in 1856, and in March of that year an important council between General Harney and the chiefs of all the Sioux bands, except the Blackfeet, was held here. The fort was abandoned in 1857. Pierre was laid out in 1880, was incorporated as a village in 1883, and was chartered as a city in 1900.
See Major Frederick T. Wilson, “Fort Pierre and Its Neighbors,” in South Dakota Historical Collections, vol i (Aberdeen, S.D., 1902); and Hiram M. Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West (3 vols., New York, 1902).
PIERRE DE CASTELNAU (d. 1208), French ecclesiastic, was born in the diocese of Montpellier. In 1199 he was archdeacon of Maguelonne, and was appointed by Pope Innocent III. as one of the legates for the suppression of heresy in Languedoc. In 1202, when a monk in the Cistercian abbey of Fontfroide, Narbonne, he was designated to similar work, first in Toulouse, and afterwards at Viviers and Montpellier. In 1207 he was in the Rhone valley and in Provence, where he became involved in the strife between the count of Baux and Raymond, count of Toulouse, by one of whose agents he was assassinated on the 15th of January 1208. He was beatified in the year of his death by Pope Innocent III.
See De la Bouillerie, Le Bienheureux Pierre de Castelnau et les Albigeois au XIII. siècle (Paris, 1866).
PIERREFONDS, a town of northern France, in the department of Oise, 9 m. S.E. of Compiègne by road. Pop. (1906), 1482. It is celebrated for its feudal stronghold, a masterpiece of modern restoration. The building is rectangular in shape, with a tower at each corner and at the centre of each of the walls, which are strengthened by crenelation and machicolation. A lofty keep defends the principal entrances on the south-west. The interior buildings are chiefly modern, but the exterior reproduces faithfully that of the medieval fortress. Pierrefonds has a church dating from various periods from the 11th to the 16th century, and its mineral springs are in some repute. The chateau was begun in the last decade of the 14th century by Louis d'Orléans, to whom the domain was given by Charles VI., and finished early in the 15th century. It was subsequently held by the Burgundians, the English and the adherents of the League, from whom it passed to Henry IV. It was dismantled in 1622. The ruins, bought by Napoleon I., were restored, by order of Napoleon III., from 1858 to 1895, under the direction, first of Viollet-le-Duc and afterwards of E. Boeswillwald.
PIERREPONT, WILLIAM (c. 1607-1678), English politician, was the second son of Robert Pierrepont, 1st earl of Kingston. Returned to the Long Parliament in 1640 as member for Great Wenlock, he threw his influence on the side of peace and took part for the parliament in the negotiations with Charles I. at Oxford in 1643. Pierrepont was a member of the committee of both kingdoms, and represented the parliamentary party during the deliberations at Uxbridge in 1645; but from that time, according to Clarendon, he forsook his moderate attitude, and “contracted more bitterness and sourness than formerly.” This statement, however, is perhaps somewhat exaggerated, as Pierrepont favoured the resumption of negotiations with the king in 1647, and in the following year his efforts on behalf of peace at Newport, where again he represented the parliamentarians, brought upon him some slight censure from Cromwell. For his services at Newport he was thanked by parliament; but he retired from active political life soon afterwards, as he disliked the “purging” of the House of Commons by Colonel Pride and the proceedings against the king. In spite of his
- ↑ Pierre Chouteau in 1804 succeeded his father, one of the founders of St Louis, in the Missouri Fur Company, and about 1834 Pratt, Chouteau & Company, of which he was the leading member, bought the entire western department of the American Fur Company, and in 1838 reorganized under the name of Pierre Chouteau, jun., & Company. Chouteau built (in 1830-1831) the “Yellowstone,” which went up the river to the present site of Pierre in 1831, and was the first steamboat to navigate the upper waters of the Missouri. Chouteau lived for some years in New York City, and while living in St Louis was a member of the convention (1820) which drafted the first constitution of Missouri.
