BALDE, Jakob, a modern Latin poet of considerable repute, was born at Ensisheim in Alsace in 1603, and died in 1668. He entered the Society of the Jesuits in 1624, and for the greater part of his life acted as court-preacher and professor of rhetoric at Munich. His Latin poems were very numerous, and those in imitation of Horace are particularly successful. Although Balde has received some attention since Herder translated several of his best pieces, and although some of his poems are by no means deficient in lightness, grace, and skilful versification, it would be a mistake to look upon him as a poet of high rank. A collected edition of his works in 4 vols, was published at Cologne in 1650; a more complete edition in 8 vols.,.at Munich, 1729. Extracts have been given by Orelli, 1805, 1818; and some detached poems have been published by various editors.

BALDI, Bernardino, a distinguished mathematician and miscellaneous writer, was descended of a noble family at Urbino, in which city he was born on the 6th of June 1533. He pursued his studies at Padua with extraordinary zeal and success, and is said to have acquired, during the course of his life, no fewer than sixteen languages, though according to Tiraboschi, the inscription on his tomb limits the number to twelve. The appearance of the plague at Padua obliged him to retire to his native city, whence he was, shortly afterwards, called to act as tutor to Ferrante Gonzaga, from whom he received the rich abbey of Guastalla. He held office as abbot for twenty-five years, and then retired to his native town. In 1612 he was employed by the duke as his envoy to Venice, where he distinguished himself by the congratulatory oration ho delivered before the Venetian senate on the election of the new doge, Andrea Memmo. Baldi died at Urbino on the 12 th of October 1617. He was, perhaps, the most universal genius of his age, and is said to have written upwards of a hundred different works, the chief part of which have remained unpublished. His various works give satisfactory evidence of his abilities as a theologian, mathematician, geographer, antiquary, historian, and poet. The Cronica dei Afatematici is an abridgment of a larger work, on which he had bestowed twelve years of labour, and which was intended to contain the lives of more than two hundred mathematicians. His life has been written by Affo, Mazzuchelli, and others.

BALDINGER, EbnestGottfried, a German physician of considerable eminence, and the author of a great number of medical publications, was born near Erfurt, 13th May 1738. He studied medicine at Erfurt, Halle, and Jena, and in 1761 was intrusted with the superintendence of the military hospitals connected with the Prussian encampment near Torgau. He published, in 1765, a dissertation on the diseases of soldiers, which met with so favourable a reception that he published an enlarged edition, under the title of Treatise on the Diseases that prevail in Armies, Langensalza, 1774, 8vo. In 1768 he became professor of medicine at Jena, whence he removed, in 1773, to Göttingen, and in 1785 to Marburg, where he died of apoplexy on the 21st of January 1804. Among his pupils were Akermann. Sömmering, and Blumenbach. Some eighty-four separate treatises are mentioned as having proceeded from his pen, in addition to numerous papers scattered through various collections and journals.

BALDINUCCI, Filippo, a distinguished Italian writer on the history of the arts, was born at Florence about 1624, and died in 1696. His chief work is entitled Notizie de Professori del Disegno da Cimabue in quà (dal 1260 sino al 1670), and was first published, in six vols. 4to, 1681-1728. The capital defect of this work is the attempt to derive all Italian art from the schools of Florence. A good edition is that by Ranalli (5 vols. 8vo, Florence, 1845-47). Baldinucci’s whole works have been published in fourteen vols, at Milan, 1808-12.

is a natural effect of old age, in which period of life the hair of the head, wanting nourishment, falls off, and leaves the head naked. Artificial baldness was used as a token of mourning; it is threatened to the voluptuous daughters of Israel, instead of well set hair, Isaiah iii, 24. See Mic. i, 16; and instances of it occur, Isaiah xv, 2; Jer. xlvii, 5. See Ezek, vii, 18; Amos viii, 10. The insult offered to Elisha by the young people of Bethel, improperly rendered “little children,” who cried out after him, “Go up, thou bald head,” may here be noticed. The town of Bethel was one of the principal nurseries of Ahab’s idolatry, and the contempt was offered to Elisha in his public character as a prophet of the Lord. If in the expression, “Go up,” there was also a reference to the translation of Elijah, as turning it into jest, this was another aggravation of the sin, to which these young people were probably instigated by their parents. The malediction laid upon them by the prophet was not an act of private resentment, but evidently proceeded from prophetic impulse.

BALDOVINETTI, Alessio, was a distinguished painter of Florence in the 15th century, whose works have now become very scarce. Hogarth takes him as a type of those obscure artists to whom the affected amateurs of his time were wont to ascribe old paintings—“, Tis a fine piece of Alessio Baldovinetti, in his third manner.” His father, Baldovinetti, belonged to a merchant family of good standing and fortune. Alessio was born in 1422, and took to painting, according to Vasari, against his father’s desire. His art was distinguished rather for study than for genius. It represents completely some of the leading characters of the Florentine school in that age. It was an age of diligent schoohng and experiment, in which art endeavoured to master more of the parts and details of nature than she had mastered heretofore, and to improve her technical means for their representation. Among the parts of nature especially studied in the 15th century, were landscape and natural history, the particulars of scenery, and the characters of birds, beasts, and plants. Alessio Baldovinetti surpassed all his contemporaries in attention to these matters. In Vasari’s words, you see in his paintings “rivers, bridges, stones, grasses, fruits, roads, fields, cities, castles, arenas, and an infinity of suchlike things.” From this quality of his art it has been guessed, without sufficient cause, that he was the pupil of Paolo Uccelli, the first Florentine master who devoted himself to such matters. For the rest, this extreme care and minuteness renders his manner somewhat hard. Like many other painters of his time, he treats draperies, hair, and Buch parts, with a manner that shows the influence of the goldsmith, and is more proper to metal work than to painting. His principal extant works ...