During Urban's pontificate the poet lived at Rome in considerable reputation, though at the same time he was censored for his sordid avarice.

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 published in 1618, similar but confessedly inferior to the contemporary work of Alessandro Tassoni, La secchia rapita.

[1] 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.

Bracciolini left also a series of unpublished letters on poetic theory that have been collected in a modern edition by Guido Baldassarri.