Achilles Bocchius

Plaats: Bologna

Geboren: 1488

Dood: 1562

Biografie:

Achille Bocchi, also known as Achilles Bocchius, was an Italian humanist writer, emblematist, historian and lector in Greek, poetry and 'humanae litterae' at the University of Bologna. He was born in Bologna in 1488 and died there in 1562. He is best known for his emblem book Symbolicarum quaestionum de universo genere from 1555, which 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. He was a friend of Giovanni 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 of Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, nephew of the Farnese Pope Paul III. He commissioned the Palazzo Bocchi in Bologna, designed by Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola, about 1545, where he founded his Hermatena Academy. The name of the academy derives from Hermes, god of eloquence, and Athena, goddess of wisdom. The interior was frescoed by Prospero Fontana. Two original inscriptions run along the rusticated base of the facade: one in Hebrew reproduces a verse from psalm 120 in Jewish characters and reads: 'Deliver me from the liars, God! They smile so sweetly but lie through their teeth.' The other in Latin is taken from the Epistle 1 by Horace and reads: 'Rex eris, aiunt, si recte facies' ('do well, thou shalt be crowned').