CANTARINI, Simone (1612-1648), called Simone da Pesaro, a painter and etcher, was born at Oropezza near Pesaro in 1612. He was a disciple of Guido, and a fellow-student of Domenichino and Albano. The irritability of his temper and his vanity were extreme; and it is said that his death, which took place at Verona in 1648, was occasioned by chagrin at his failure in a portrait of the duke of Mantua. Others relate that he was poisoned by a Mantuan painter whom he had injured. His pictures, though masterly and spirited, are deficient in originality. Some of his works have been mistaken for examples of Guido, to whom, indeed, he is considered superior in the extremities of the figures. Among his principal paintings are St Anthony, at Cagli; the Magdalene, at Pesaro; the Transfiguration, in the Brera Gallery, Milan; the Portrait of Guido, in the Bologna Gallery; and St Romuald in the Casa Paolucci. His most celebrated etching is Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, honouring the arms of Cardinal Borghese.
CANTEMIR, Antiochus (1700-1744), the father of Russian poetry, was the youngest son of Demetrius Cantemir, noticed below. Under the ablest professors, whom Peter the Great had invited to St Petersburg, he studied mathematics, physics, history, moral philosophy, and polite literature. When quite young he was elected a member of the Academy of St Petersburg; and he wrote some satires at twenty, which helped greatly to fix Russian versification and develop Russian poetry. At thirty years of age he was nominated minister to the court of Great Britain; and there, as well as in France, whither he went in 1736 as minister-plenipotentiary, he was equally admired as a statesman and as a man of letters. His conduct in relation to the different revolutions which agitated Russia during his absence procured him the confidence and esteem of three successive princes. He died at Paris in 1744. Besides a Russian translation of Anacreon and the epistles of Horace, he wrote original satires, odes, and fables, and translated Fontenelle's Plurality of Worlds and Algarotti's Dialogues on Light and Colours. The Abbé Guasco wrote his life in French, and translated his satires into that language.
CANTEMIR, Demetrius, son of a prince of Moldavia, was born in 1673, and died in 1723. On his father's death, though not permitted to succeed to the throne of Moldavia, he continued faithfully to serve the Turks, distinguishing himself in many campaigns, and acquiring the Oriental as well as the European languages, of which he became a great master. In 1710 he was at last appointed prince of Moldavia, in order to aid in resisting the threatened invasion of Peter the Great. Convinced of the approaching ruin of the Turks, Cantemir joined the Czar, and shared in the campaign of 1711 on the Pruth, which proved so humiliating to Russia. On the conclusion of peace, Peter, who had refused to give up his ally to the victorious Turks, took him with him to Russia, where he lived till his death, assisting the Czar in his wars, and in great favour with him. He wrote several works, the most important being a history of the growth and decay of the Ottoman empire.
Plan of Canterbury.
