Bosco, Bartolomeo | The Bullet Catch

Bosco, Bartolomeo

Bartholomaus Bosco eine außerordentliche Vorstellung. [Np, but Leipzig?, ca. 1827]

Broadside (470 x 330 mm). Woodcut vignette depicting Bosco's bullet catch, text in German; some faint foxing. Matted, framed, and glazed.

The Bullet Catch

Giovanni Bartolomeo Bosco was an Italian magician who rose to prominence in the mid-19th century. He is perhaps best remembered for his skills with cups and balls. "This playbill features the gun trick…first described in the sixteenth century, which resulted in the death of a number of performers in the intervening three hundred years. It is embellished with a striking woodcut of the blindfolded Bosco about to be fired at by a half dozen marksmen" (EE 82).  

Rare.

REFERENCE:

Exemplars, p. 25; EE 82-3