Giuseppe Bossi

He ranks among the foremost figures of Neoclassical culture in Lombardy, along with Ugo Foscolo, Giuseppe Parini, Andrea Appiani or Manzoni.

He then studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts at Milan,[1] and spent the years 1795 to 1801 in Rome, where he drew Roman remains and honed his skills in drawing anatomy at the morgue of a hospital and formed an intimate friendship with Canova, who made a portrait bust of Bossi [1].

On the occasion of the visit of Napoleon to Milan in 1805, Bossi exhibited at the Pinacoteca a drawing of the Last Judgment of Michelangelo, and paintings representing Aurora and Night, Oedipus and Creon, and the Italian Parnassus.

[1] By command of prince Eugène de Beauharnais, viceroy of Italy, Bossi undertook to make a copy of The Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci, then almost obliterated, for the purpose of getting it rendered in mosaic.

Bossi's other publications were Delle Opinioni di Leonardo intorno alla simmetria de corpi umani (1811), and Del Tipo dell'arte della pittura (1816).