Ercole Bazzicaluva, also spelled Bezzicaluva or Bazzicaluve (active 1640), was an Italian engraver of the Baroque period.
Dedicating his series of "few and fake countries" to the Grand Duke of Tuscany on Oct. 24th 1638, Bazzicaluva declared himself being originated “of Pisa"; but then, in the margins of the first of some military episodes of 1641, he is called "Florentine" (perhaps due to the fact that Pisa was part, for more than a century, of the State of Florence)As for his birth year, no one has ever succeeded in establishing it exactly, nor can we accept, even as an approximate one, the date of 1600 proposed by De Boni, because in 1638 he presented his engravings to the Grand Duke Ferdinando II of Tuscany.
[1] He was signing his works Bazzicaluva (even with only one z) or Bezzicaluve; but this surname, already taken as a nickname, in his family was quite recent, because his ancestors were called "Fregoni", as we can deduce from a document dated 1599, in which we find an "Alessandro Fregoni aliter Bezzica l'Uve".
In 1641, that is three years after the "few and fake countries" that Bazzicaluva had dedicated to the Grand Duke, wishing him to possess "so many real worlds that Anaxagoras could not even imagine ", was published the tragic-heroic poem Le pazzie de'savi, or rather the Lambertaccio by Bartolomeo Bocchini, with 13 small illustrations of executed by Bazzicaluva that re-echoed the same roar of arms in which he, as a man, loved to live most of his days.
Apart from being an engraver, Bazzicaluva was also field master of the Grand Duke, court chamberlain in Innsbruck, castellan of the fortress of Livorno and governor of that of Siena.