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Ive recently started exploring the history of art through the site public domain review.org. often, I come to art info late as I've never completed serious studies in art. This is my latest interest. Apologies it's a bit long.
Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s Bizzarie di Varie Figure (1624)
At first glance you may be forgiven for thinking these images to have sprung from some hitherto unknown corner of the Cubist movement, but these remarkably prescient etchings are in fact the creation of an artist working a whole three centuries earlier. In 1624, Giovanni Battista Bracelli — an Italian engraver and painter working in Florence — produced an extraordinary book of prints titled Bizzarie di Varie Figure (Oddities of various figures).
Not a lot is known about Bracelli's life. Sometimes going by the name Brazzè, and also the nickname “il Bigio” ("The Gray One", apparently a reference to his penchant for gray clothes) he is recorded on the membership records of Florence's Academy of Drawing from 1619 to 1635. He studied with the painter Jacopo da Empoli (1551–1640), and most of Giovanni Battista Bracelli's other work is in a similar popular vain to his master's (nothing like the Bizzarie di Varie Figure) — though he did produce an amusing alphabet composed of human forms. For more info on his life and Bizzarie di Varie Figure we highly recommend this essay by Sue Welsh Reed.
The images featured in this post are from the US National Gallery of Art, and are digitisations of a copy held by the Rosenwald Collection, which you can also see over at the Library of Congress.
Giovanni Battista Bracelli’s Bizzarie di Varie Figure (1624)
At first glance you may be forgiven for thinking these images to have sprung from some hitherto unknown corner of the Cubist movement, but these remarkably prescient etchings are in fact the creation of an artist working a whole three centuries earlier. In 1624, Giovanni Battista Bracelli — an Italian engraver and painter working in Florence — produced an extraordinary book of prints titled Bizzarie di Varie Figure (Oddities of various figures).
Not a lot is known about Bracelli's life. Sometimes going by the name Brazzè, and also the nickname “il Bigio” ("The Gray One", apparently a reference to his penchant for gray clothes) he is recorded on the membership records of Florence's Academy of Drawing from 1619 to 1635. He studied with the painter Jacopo da Empoli (1551–1640), and most of Giovanni Battista Bracelli's other work is in a similar popular vain to his master's (nothing like the Bizzarie di Varie Figure) — though he did produce an amusing alphabet composed of human forms. For more info on his life and Bizzarie di Varie Figure we highly recommend this essay by Sue Welsh Reed.
The images featured in this post are from the US National Gallery of Art, and are digitisations of a copy held by the Rosenwald Collection, which you can also see over at the Library of Congress.
