bambocciante
/bæmbəˈt͡ʃænti/
bambocciante means any of a group of Dutch painters, from the seventeenth century, who painted scenes from ordinary life; used attributively to describe the style of their paintings. Lexicurio rates it Sui generis — a strength score of 87 out of 100.
bambocciante is pronounced /bæmbəˈt͡ʃænti/.
Why “bambocciante” is a great word
BAMBOCCIANTE — [Noun] A painter of the 17th-century Roman school, chiefly Dutch or Flemish, who specialized in small, meticulously observed genre scenes of everyday life among the lower classes. Borrowed from Italian bambocciante, a derivative of Bamboccio ("ugly doll, puppet"), the nickname of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer (c. 1599–c. 1642), who was a central figure in the group. Unlike a history painter, who trafficked in grand, idealized narratives from scripture or antiquity, or a vedutista, who documented the sweeping architecture of the city, a bambocciante was an anthropologist of the alley and a poet of the piazza's periphery. His art resides in the glint of light on a beggar’s kettle, the weary slump of a porter’s shoulders, and the mud-spattered hem of a skirt in a Roman downpour—a quiet testament that the true subject of art is not nobility, but the unvarnished theatre of life.
Etymology
Borrowed from Italian bambocciante.
noun
- Any of a group of Dutch painters, from the seventeenth century, who painted scenes from ordinary life; used attributively to describe the style of their paintings