Basilicata \ba-,ze-le-'ka-ta\ Autonomous region (pop., 2001 prelim.: 595,727), southern Italy. Roughly divided into a western mountainous region and an eastern section of low hills and wide valleys, its capital is Potenza. Known in ancient times as Lucania, the area was under Lombard League rule in the early Middle Ages. Until the fall of the Swabian Hohen- staufens (1254), it played a significant part in the affairs of southern Italy;
St. Basil, detail of a mosaic, 12th cen¬ tury; in the Palatine Chapel, Palermo, Sicily, Italy.
AUNARI—ART RESOURCE
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Basilides ► Basque Country I 175
later it followed the variable fortunes of the Kingdom of Naples until united with the Kingdom of Italy in 1861. The region suffered severe damage in a disastrous earthquake in 1980. Agriculture is an economic mainstay.
Basilides V.ba-so-'lI-dezV (fl. 2nd century ad, Alexandria) Founder of the Basilidian school of Gnosticism. According to Clement of Alexandria, Basil¬ ides claimed to base his teaching on a secret tradition of Peter the Apostle. He wrote psalms, odes, commentaries on the Gospels, and his own gos¬ pel. Fragments of these writings and varying accounts by Clement, St. Irenaeus, and others suggest that his system of belief included elements from Neoplatonism as well as the New Testament. The school survived in Egypt until the 4th century.
Baskerville, John (b. Jan. 28,
Eng.—d. Jan. 8, 1775, Birmingham,
Warwickshire) British typographer.
In 1757 he set up a printing house and published his first work, an edi¬ tion of Virgil. His editions of the Latin classics, John Milton’s poems (1758), and a folio Bible (1763) are characterized by clear and careful presswork rather than ornament; they are among the finest examples of the art of printing. He served as printer to Cambridge University (1758-68), and he created the widely used Baskerville typeface, which is still used and prized for its clarity and balance.
basketball Court game between two teams of five players. They score by tossing, or “shooting,” an inflated ball through a raised hoop, or “bas¬ ket,” located in their opponent’s end of the court. A goal is worth two points, three if shot from outside a specified limit. A player who is fouled (through unwarranted physi¬ cal contact) by another is awarded one to three free-throw attempts (depending on the circumstances of the foul). A successful free throw is worth one point. Invented in 1891 by James A. Naismith at the YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass., basketball quickly became popular throughout the U.S., with games orga¬ nized at the high school and collegiate level for both sexes. (For the first game, Naismith used as goals two half-bushel peach baskets, which gave
the sport its name.) Women first played the game under a markedly dif¬ ferent set of rules. The game developed internationally at a slower pace. The first Olympic basketball contest was held in 1936, and the Federa¬ tion Internationale de Basketball Amateur (FIB A) introduced world cham¬ pionships for men and women in 1950 and 1953, respectively. In the U.S., high school and collegiate championship tournaments are traditionally held in March and generate considerable excitement. A men’s professional league was organized in 1898 but did not gain much of a following until 1949, when it was reconstituted as the National Basketball Association (NBA). The first women’s professional leagues in the U.S. emerged dur¬ ing the 1970s but failed after a year or two. The current Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), owned by the NBA, was organized in 1997. Club and professional basketball outside the U.S. developed rap¬ idly in the latter part of the 20th century. The Basketball Hall of Fame is located in Springfield.
basketry Art and craft of making containers and other objects from interwoven flexible fibres such as grasses, twigs, bamboo, and rushes. It is primarily a functional rather than a decorative art. The type of basketry in a given geographic region is determined by the type of vegetation available there. Numerous Asian, African, Oceanic, and Native American cultures have excelled in basketry.
Baskin, Leonard (b. Aug. 15, 1922, New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.—d. June 3, 2000, Northampton, Mass.) U.S. sculptor and graphic artist. After studying in Europe and the U.S., in 1939 he had his first one-man exhi¬ bition in New York City, and he later taught for many years at Smith Col¬ lege. He is known for his bleak portrayals of the human figure. His sculptures in bronze, limestone, and wood are dominated by themes of death, vulnerability, and spiritual decay. In his woodcuts he developed a distinctive linear style, depicting figures resembling those in anatomical charts. Baskin was particularly noted for his memorials, including the Holocaust Memorial (dedicated 1994) in Ann Arbor, Mich.
basking shark Huge, sluggish shark (family Cetorhinidae) named for its habit of floating or slowly swimming at the surface. Possibly com¬ prising more than one distinct species, it inhabits northern and temperate regions of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. It may grow as large as 46 ft (14 m); among fishes, only the whale shark grows larger. Despite its size, the basking shark feeds on plankton. It is gray-brown or black¬ ish, with tiny teeth and very long gill slits. It is generally harmless and is hunted sporadically for fish meal and liver oil.
Basle See Basel
Basque \'bask\ Spanish Vasco Member of a people of unknown ori¬ gin living in Spain and France along the Bay of Biscay and in the west¬ ern Pyrenees mountains in the region of the Basque Country. About
850,000 true Basques live in Spain and another 130,000 in France. Physically the Basques are similar to other Western European peoples; the Basque language, however, is not Indo-European. The Basques have sought autonomy from Spain since the 19th century. A national govern¬ ment was proclaimed in the Spanish Civil War, which saw the brutal bombing of Guernica (1937). After the war, the government and many Basques went into exile as Francisco Franco abolished their special privi¬ leges. The Basque separatist move¬ ment was rekindled after Franco’s death and the establishment of a lib¬ eral Spanish monarchy in 1975. Despite the granting of limited autonomy in 1978, the more militant separatists, including the terrorist ETA (Basque Homeland and Lib¬ erty), continued a campaign for complete independence.
Basque Country Spanish Pais Vasco VpIs-'bas-koN Euskera Euskadi Autonomous community (pop., 2005 est.: 2,124,846) and his-
basket
The U.S. professional court is shown. The U.S. college court has similar dimensions but has a shallower (19-ft 9-in) three-point line. International courts are slightly smaller and have 20-ft 6-in three-point lines and trapezoidal free-throw lanes that are wider at the boundary line than at the free-throw line. The basket height is 10 ft on all courts.
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1706, Wolverly, Worcestershire,
Baskerville, detail of a portrait after James Millar, 1774; in the National Portrait Gallery, London
COURTESY OF THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, LONDON
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176 I Basque Country ► bat
torical region, northern Spain. Bounded by the Bay of Biscay, it consists of the modem provinces of Vizcaya (Biscay), Alava, and Guipuzcoa and has an area of 2,793 sq mi (7,234 sq km); its capital is Vitoria-Gasteiz. The Pyrenees Mountains separate it from the Basque Country of France. The Basques who inhabit the region have long sought autonomy. A sepa¬ ratist movement succeeded in regaining Basque autonomy in 1936 under the short-lived Republican government, but autonomy was withdrawn by Francisco Franco in 1937. Though limited autonomy was granted in 1979, a campaign of terrorism against the Spanish government continued. Alava is an agricultural region, while metallurgical industry is concentrated around Bilbao.