| After studying at Giulio Parigis academy, he became first a servant of His Serene Highness the Archduke of Innsbruck, then castellan of the old fortress of Livorno, and finally of the fortress of Pisa (Baldinucci). Art was not his main interest, yet Baldinucci described him as a brilliant draughtsman in pen and ink, and his drawings, which are mainly of subjects inspired by his experience of military occupations, hunts and battles, are highly accomplished. His landscape drawings, which include a View of the Valley of the Arno, with the Villa Ambrogiana (1633; Florence, Bib. Marucelliana), a rare example of a dated drawing, and his Landscape with Rustic Houses and Muleteer (Florence, Uffizi), convey a Tuscan feeling for the pleasures of country life. A group of studies of trees (Florence, Uffizi), reminiscent of similar drawings by Paul Bril, delight in the effects of gnarled roots and tree trunks decoratively patterned against the sky. In 1638 he etched a series of marines and landscapes, which he described, in the dedication to Ferdinand II de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, as rare and imaginary lands. Although these are early works, they are elegantly composed, reminiscent, in their skilled rendering, of the luminous space and soft vegetation of the art of Stefano della Bella and Filippo Napoletano. In four engravings of military episodes (1641) the compositions, with a deeply shadowed foreground set against a deep, broad landscape, are derived from prints by Antonio Tempesta. In the same year Bazzicaluva produced 13 prints for Bartolommeo Bocchinis mock heroic poem Le pazzie dei Savi, o vero il Lambertaccio (1641). A series of six etchings of hunts, of unknown date, are very close to the style of della Bella. |
