Francesco Bracciolini

• Name — Francesco Bracciolini • Born — 26 November 1566 • Birthplace — Pistoia, Grand Duchy of Tuscany • Died — 31 August 1645 • Place of death — Pistoia, Grand Duchy of Tuscany • Resting Place — San Francesco, Pistoia • Occupation — * Poet • Intellectual • Parents — Giuliano Bracciolini and Marietta Bracciolini (née Cellesi) • Alma Mater — University of Bologna

Bracciolini was born of a noble family in Pistoia in 1566. On his removing to Florence he was admitted into the Accademia Fiorentina, and devoted himself to literature. At Rome he entered the service of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini. He followed Barberini to Paris, where published in 1605 the first cantos of his Croce Racquistata (The Recaptured Cross), an epic poem completed in 1611 and inspired by Torquato Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. After the death of Clement VIII he returned to his own country; and when his patron Barberini was elected pope, under the name of Urban VIII, Bracciolini repaired to Rome and was made secretary to the pope's brother, Cardinal Antonio Marcello Barberini. Bracciolini had also the honor conferred on him of taking a surname from the arms of the Barberini family, which were bees; whence he was afterwards known by the name of Bracciolini dell'Api. During Urban's pontificate the poet lived at Rome in considerable reputation, though at the same time he was censored for his sordid avarice. On the death of the pope Bracciolini returned to Pistoia, where he died in 1645. There is scarcely any species of poetry, epic, dramatic, pastoral, lyric or burlesque, which Bracciolini did not attempt; but he is principally noted for his mock-heroic poem Lo Scherno degli Dei (The Derision of the Gods) published in 1618, similar but confessedly inferior to the contemporary work of Alessandro Tassoni, La secchia rapita. Of his serious heroic poems the most celebrated is La Croce Racquistata. This poem in thirty-five books on the subject of the recovery of the True Cross was intended to continue the tradition of the Orlando Furioso and the Jerusalem Delivered, and while those poems celebrated the House of Este in Ferrara, Bracciolini's verses glorified and provided an ancient imperial genealogy for the Medici Grand Dukes of Late Renaissance Tuscany. La Croce Racquistata is regarded as one of the best of the epic poems written in Italy after Ariosto's and Tasso's masterworks. First published in Paris in 1605, it was reprinted several times and exerted a strong influence on the works of many subsequent poets (Girolamo Graziani perhaps most prominent among them). It is held in high esteem by Italian literary critics. The episode of Alceste and Elisa is particularly praised. Another epic by Bracciolini, La Bulgheria Convertita, celebrated the conversinon of the Bulgars. Bracciolini left also a series of unpublished letters on poetic theory that have been collected in a modern edition by Guido Baldassarri.

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