Poggio Bracciolini, Gian Francesco

(jän fränchās´kō pôd´jō brät´´chōlē´nē), 1380–1459, Italian humanist. A secretary in the Roman curia, he later became chancellor and historiographer of the republic of Florence. A prodigious copyist, he rediscovered many lost classical works, including Lucretius' De rerum natura and Quintilian's Institutio oratorica. His Facetiae (1474), a collection of earthy fables and anticlerical satires, was printed in England by William Caxton in 1484.