Giovan Antonio Rusconi (c. 1500–05; † 1578) was a Venetian architect, hydraulic engineer, translator and illustrator of Vitruvius.
Apart from being introduced into building and painting young Antonio Rusconi studied mathematics at the University of Padua under Giovanni Battista Memmo and Niccolò Tartaglia.
Extensively consulting Vitruvius’ "Ten Books on Architecture" while he was constructing a novel type of watermill Antonio became aware of many grave technical errors within the work's early Renaissance editions and commentaries.
Finally Pietro Lauro, who had rendered Leon Battista Alberti's “De Architectura” into the vernacular, convinced Rusconi to set out with a translation of his own.
Yet, since then countless treatises on architecture and commentaries on Vitruvius (e.g. by Daniele Barbaro, Gicaomo Vignola and Andrea Palladio) were being published, Rusconi's Venetian editors, Giolito and Tommaso Porcacchi, saw no benefit in printing another title on the subject.