VANINI, LUCILIO, or, as he styled himself in his works, Gruilo CESARE (1585-1619), Italian free-thinker, was born at Taurisano, near Naples. He studied at Rome, Naples, and at Padua, and was ordained priest. Subsequently he led a roving life in France, Switzerland and the Low Countries.
Vanini was obliged to flee from Lyons to England in 1614, but was imprisoned in London for some reason for forty-nine days. Returning to Italy he made an attempt to teach in Genoa, but was driven once more to France, where he tried to clear him self of suspicion by publishing a book against atheists, Ampithe atrum aeternae providentiae divino-magicum (1615). Though the definitions of God are somewhat pantheistic, the book is suffi ciently orthodox, but the arguments are largely ironical, and can not be taken as expounding his real views. Vanini expressly tells us so in his second (and only other published) work, De admiran dis naturae regime deaeque mortalium arcanis (Paris, 1616), which, originally certified by two doctors of the Sorbonne, was afterwards re-examined and condemned. Vanini then left Paris, where he had been staying as chaplain to the marechal de Bas sompierre, and began to teach in Toulouse. In Nov. 1618 he was
arrested, and after a prolonged trial was condemned as an atheist. He was burnt on Feb. 9, 1619.
See Cousin, Fragments de philosophie cartesienn,e, i. (Brussels, 1838 40) ; French trans. M. X. Rousselot (Paris, 1842) ; J. Owen, Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance (1893), J. Toulan, Etude sur L. Vanini (Strasbourg, 1869) ; Cesare Cantu, Gli Eretici d' Italia, iii. (Tu rin, 1867) ; Fuhrmann, Leben and Schicksale (Leipzig, 1800) ; Vaisse, L. Vanini (1871) ; Palumbo, Vanini, e i suoi tempi (Naples, 1878). VANLOO, CHARLES ANDREW subject painter, a younger brother of John Baptist Vanloo a well known portrait painter, was born at Nice on Feb. 15, 1705. He received some instruction from his brother, and like him studied in Rome under Luti. In 1734 he settled in Paris, and in 1735 became a member of the French Academy; and he was decorated with the order of St. Michael and appointed principal painter to the king. He died in Paris on July 15, 1765.