in the centre of a fertile district, with the largest wine trade in Sicily. Pop. (1901) 30,832 (town), 32,219 (commune).
VITTORIO, a town and episcopal residence of the province of Treviso, Venetia, Italy, 25 m. by rail N. of Treviso, 466 ft. above sea-level. Pop. (1901) 2977 (town), 19,133 (commune). It is a summer resort, with sulphur and saline springs (51.8° to 59° F.), and was formed in 1879 by the union of Ceneda (the episcopal see) and Serravalle. The cathedral contains paintings by Pomponio Amalteo (a pupil of Pordenone) and others. At Serravalle is a church with a fine altar-piece (1547) by Titian. It is a seat of the silkworm breeding and silk-throwing industries.
VITUS, ST (German, Veit; French, Guy). According to the legend, where he is associated with Modestus and Crescentia, by whom he had been brought up, St. Vitus suffered martyrdom at a very early age under the emperor Diocletian. Son of a Sicilian nobleman who was a worshipper of idols, Vitus was converted to the Christian faith without the knowledge of his father, was denounced by him and scourged, but resisted all attacks on his profession. Admonished by an angel, he crossed the sea to Lucania and went to Rome, where he suffered martyrdom. His festival is celebrated on the 15th of June. The Passion of St. Vitus has no historical value, but his name occurs in the Martyrologium hieronymianum. In 836 the abbey of Corvey, in Saxony, received his relics, and became a very active centre of his cult. In the second half of the 9th century the monks of Corvey, according to Helmold's Chronica Slavorum, evangelized the island of Rügen, where they built a church in honour of St Vitus. The islanders soon relapsed, but they kept up the superstitious cult of the saint (whom they honoured as a god), returning to Christianity three centuries later. At Prague, too, there are some relics of the saint, who is the patron of Bohemia and also of Saxony, and one of the fourteen “protectors” (Nothhelfer) of the church in Germany. Among the diseases against which St Vitus is invoked is chorea, also known as St. Vitus's Dance.
See Acta sanctorum, June, iii. 1013-42 and vi. 137-40; Bibliotheca hagiographica Latina (Brussels, 1899), n. 8711-23; J. H. Kessel, “St Veit, seine Geschichte, Verehrung and bildliche Darstellungen,” in Jahrbücher des Vereins von Alterthumsfreunden im Rheinlande (1867), pp. 152-83. (H. De.)
VIVALDO, UGOLINO and SORLEONE DE (fl. 1291–1315), Genoese explorers, connected with the first known expedition in search of an ocean way from Europe to India. Ugolino, with his brother Guido or Vadino Vivaldo, was in command of this expedition of two galleys, which he had organized in conjunction with Tedisio Doria, and which left Genoa in May 1291 with the purpose of going to India “by the Ocean Sea” and bringing back useful things for trade. Planned primarily for commerce, the enterprise also aimed at proselytism. Two Franciscan friars accompanied Ugolino. The galleys were well armed and sailed down the Morocco coast to a place called Gozora (Cape Nun), in 28° 47′ N., after which nothing more was heard of them. Early in the next (14th) century, Sorleone de Vivaldo, son of Ugolino, undertook a series of distant wanderings in search of his father, and even penetrated, it is said, to Magadoxo on the Somali coast. In 1455 another Genoese seaman, Antoniotto Uso di Mare, sailing with Cadamosto in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, claimed to have met, near the mouth of the Gambia, with the last descendant of the survivors of the Vivaldo expedition. The two galleys, he was told, had sailed to the Sea of Guinea; in that sea one was stranded, but the other passed on to a place on the coast of Ethiopia-Mena or Amenuan, near the Gihon (here probably meaning the Senegal)—where the Genoese were seized and held in close captivity.
See Jacopo Doria, “Annales” (under A.D. 1291) in Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae historica. Scriptores, xviii. 335 (1863); the “Conoçimiento de todos los Reinos,” ed. Marcos Jimenez de la Espada in the Boletin of the Geographical Society of Madrid, vol. ii., No. 2, pp. 111, 113, 117-18 (Madrid, February, 1877); Canale, Degli antichi navigatori e scopritori Genovesi (Genoa, 1846), G. H. Pertz, Der älteste Versuch zur Entdeckung des Seeweges nach Ostindien (Berlin, 1859); Annali di Geografia e di Statistica composti … da Giacomo Gråberg (Genoa, 1802); Belgrano, “… Annali … di Caffaro,” in Archiv. Stor. Ital., 3rd series, ii. 124, &c., and in Atti della Soc. Lig. di Storia Patria, xv. 320 (1881); W. Heyd, Histoire du commerce du Levant (the improved French edition of the Geschichte des Levantehandels), ii. 140-43 (Paris, 1886); C. R. Beazley, Dawn of Modern Geography, iii. 413-19, 551 (Oxford, 1906).
VIVARINI, the surname of a family of painters of Murano (Venice), who produced a great quantity of work in Venice and its neighbourhood in the 15th century, leading on to that phase of the school which is represented by Carpaccio and the Bellinis.
Antonio Vivarini (Antonio of Murano) was probably the earliest of this family. He came from the school of Andrea da Murano, and his works show the influence of Gentile da Fabriano. The earliest known date of a picture of his, an altar-piece in the Venetian academy, is 1440; the latest, in the Lateran museum, 1464, but he appears to have been alive in 1470. He worked in company with a certain “Joannes de Alemania,” who has been (with considerable doubt) regarded as a brother (Giovanni of Murano), but no trace of this painter exists of a date later than 1447. After 1447 Antonio painted either alone or in combination with his younger brother Bartolommeo. The works of Antonio are well drawn for their epoch, with a certain noticeable degree of softness, and with good flesh and other tints. Three of his principal paintings are the “Virgin Enthroned with the Four Doctors of the Church,” the “Coronation of the Virgin,” and “Sts Peter and Jerome.” The first two (in which Giovanni co-operated) are in the Venetian academy, the third in the National Gallery, London. This gallery contains also specimens of the two under-named painters.
Bartolommeo Vivarini is known to have worked from 1450 to 1499. He learned oil-painting from Antonello da Messina, and is said to have produced, in 1473, the first oil picture done in Venice. This is in the church of S. Giovanni e Paolo—a large altar-piece in nine divisions, representing Augustine and other saints. Most of his works, however, including one in the National Gallery, are in tempera. His outline is always hard, and his colour good; the figures have much dignified and devout expression. As “vivarino” means in Italian a goldfinch, he sometimes drew a goldfinch as the signature of his pictures.
Luigi or Alvise Vivarini, born about 1446, painted in 1475 and on to 1502, when he died. It has sometimes been supposed that, besides the Luigi who was the latest of this pictorial family, there had also been another Luigi who was the earliest, this supposition being founded on the fact that one picture is signed with the name, with the date 1414. There is good ground, however, for considering this date to be a forgery of a later time. The works of Luigi show an advance on those of his predecessors, and some of them are productions of high attainment; one of the best was executed for the Scuola di S. Girolamo in Venice, representing the saint caressing his lion, and some monks decamping in terror. The architecture and perspective in this work are superior. Other works by Luigi are in Treviso and in Milan. He painted some remarkable portraits. (W. M. R.)
VIVERO, a town of north-western Spain, in the province of Lugo; on the Ria de Vivero, an estuary formed by the river Landrove, which here enters the Bay of Biscay. Pop. (1900) 12,843. Vivero is an old-fashioned and picturesque town, connected with the opposite bank of the estuary by a bridge of twelve arches and a causeway. Its fishing fleet, its coasting trade and the agricultural products of the fertile country around are important. The only means of communication with the interior is by the road to Cabreiros, for Lugo and Ferrol.
VIVES, JUAN LUIS (1492-1540), Spanish scholar, was born at Valencia on the 6th of March 1492. He studied at Paris from 1509 to 1512, and in 1519 was appointed professor of humanities at Louvain. At the instance of his friend Erasmus he prepared an elaborate commentary on Augustine's De Civitate Dei, which was published in 1522 with a dedication to Henry VIII. Soon afterwards he was invited to England, and is said to have acted as tutor to the princess Mary, for whose use he wrote De ratione studii puerilis epistolae duae
