- Achille Bocchi
Achille Bocchi (Achilles Bocchius) (1488-1562) of
Bologna was an Italian humanist writer, administrator and teacher of law at theUniversity of Bologna . [ [http://www.she-philosopher.com/gallery/atheniansociety.html she-philosopher.com: Gallery exhibit (The Athenian Society) ] ] He is best known for hisemblem book "Symbolicarum quaestionum de universo genere" from 1555. " [It] takes as its subject the whole of universal knowledge: physics, metaphysics, theology, dialectic, Love, Life and Death, packaging them under the veil of fables and myths." [John Manning, "The Emblem" (2002) p.114.] It borrowed fromFrancesco Colonna . [Manning p.73 refers to "Bocchi's wholesale pillaging of one of Colonna's hieroglyphic fragments".] The title page put it in the tradition of "serio ludere". ["Playing seriously"; Manning p. 154.] Bocchi was a friend ofGiovanni Pierio Valeriano Bolzanio , and his work is related to Valeriano's "Hieroglyphica".Bocchi was the leader of an informal
academy , the "Accademia Bocchiana", under the protection ofCardinal Alessandro Farnese , nephew of theFarnese Pope Paul III . For BocchiGiacomo Barozzi da Vignola , recently returned from Fontainebleau, designed the Palazzo Bocchi, Bologna, about 1545 (built 1545-55 [It was engraved in 1555. Wolfgang Lotz, "Architecture in the Later 16th Century" "College Art Journal" 17.2 (Winter 1958, pp. 129-139) fig. 4.] ); for the façade Bocchi provided two inscriptions, one in Latin the other in Hebrew, that run along the rusticated base of the front. [The emblemmatic nature of the inscriptions, turning the whole façade into an emblem of the "Accademia Bocchiana", is discussed in Marcus Kiefer, "Emblematische Strukturen in Stein: Vignolas Palazzo Bocchi in Bologna"< (Freiburg: Rombach) 1999.]Notes
References
*Elizabeth See Watson (1993). "Achille Bocchi and the Emblem Book as Symbolic Form"
External links
*it icon [http://www.italica.rai.it/rinascimento/parole_chiave/schede/bocchi_achille.htm Biography]
* [http://www.jmcvey.net/emblemata/intro.htm Page illustration]
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