23 cantons and 267 communes. It belongs to the region of the
XIII. army corps and to the academie (educational division) of
Clermont-Ferrand. Its bishopric is at St Flour and depends on the
archbishopric of Bourges. Its court of appeal is at Riom. The capital is
Aurillac (q.v.), and St Flour (q.v.) is the other principal town.

CANTARINI, SIMONE (1612-1648), called SIMONE DA PESARO, painter and
etcher, was born at Oropezza near Pesaro in 1612. He was a disciple of
Guido Reni 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
Reni, to whom, indeed, he is by some 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."

CANTATA (Italian for a song or story set to music), a vocal composition
accompanied by instruments and generally containing more than one
movement. In the 16th century, when all serious music was vocal, the
term had no reason to exist, but with the rise of instrumental music in
the 17th century cantatas began to exist under that name as soon as the
instrumental art was definite enough to be embodied in sonatas. From the
middle of the 17th till late in the 18th century a favourite form of
Italian chamber music was the cantata for one or two solo voices, with
accompaniment of harpsichord and perhaps a few other solo instruments.
It consisted at first of a declamatory narrative or scene in recitative,
held together by a primitive aria repeated at intervals. Fine examples
may be found in the church music of Carissimi; and the English vocal
solos of Purcell (such as _Mad Tom_ and _Mad Bess_) show the utmost that
can be made of this archaic form. With the rise of the Da Capo aria the
cantata became a group of two or three arias joined by recitative.
Handel's numerous Italian