Dictionary of


Art  &  Artist




 

 Braccelli Giovanni Battista

 

Braccelli Giovanni Battista      Pages: 1, 2


(1600-1650)

Italian painter and printmaker. Baldinucci mentioned several artists of this name: a Bracelli born in Genoa who died aged 25, a Bracelli from Florence who was a pupil of Giulio Parigi, a painter called Bracelli nicknamed il Bigio and a Bracelli who was a follower of Jacopo da Empoli and who among other works published, in Livorno in 1624, some interesting etchings referred to as Oddities. While the Genoese and the Florentine Bracelli are clearly distinct personalities, the other references may possibly concern the same individual. The name Bracelli appears after 1624 in a series of engravings printed in Rome. In 1632 an extremely rare and bizarre Illustrated Alphabet was printed in Naples and appears closely related to the fantastic vein of the Oddities.


see also: Braccelli Giovanni Battista
 

'Variae Caprici' published in Livorno, in 1624

 

Bizzarie di Varie Figure, published in 1624 in Livorno, and dedicated to Don Pietro Medici is a collection of prints by Italian printmaker Giovanni Battista Braccelli. The depiction of a variety of human shapes aggregated from a variety of objects or landscapes appears prescient of modern cubist experiments. In this book, he engraves baroque experiments recalling Arcimboldo, engaging in a rarified set of conceits. Some of the figures are composed of boxes or raquets or curlicues.

The book attracted very little notice until its rediscovery in Paris ca. 1950. Its rediscoverer, Alain Brieux, published a limited facsimile edition of the book in 1963, with a preface by Tristan Tzara.

Il Giornale Nuovo noted that "Thirty-two plates gathered under the title Bizzarie di varie figure. The title of this album was, the review said, most apt, as the figure studies therein were bizarre indeed, somewhat reminiscent, if anything, of the works of De Chirico, only three centuries before the fact."