BOSSI, GIUSEPPE. — Painter and writer, born in Busto Arsizio on 17 August 1777, died in Milan on 9 December 1815. A Neoclassicist, he was a superficial follower of Appiani in the Funeral of Themistocles (Gallery of Modern Art of Milan), in the frescoes of the Villa Melzi at Bellagio, in those of the Villa Marliani at Crevenna, etc. He is livelier and more spontaneous in his portraits, among which the group in the Treccani collection in Milan and the self-portraits in the Ambrosiana and the Uffizi are noteworthy.
B. also executed copies after Raffaello, whom he studied in Rome, where he lived from 1795 to 1801; he was even more attracted to Leonardo: he painted a copy of the Last Supper (1807–1809, Sforza Castle), and collected in the volumes Del Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci (Milan 1810) the information and his observations on Leonardo’s work. Stendhal drew extensively on this study for the pages devoted to the Last Supper in his Histoire de la peinture. His other writings include the Discorso sulla utilità politica delle arti e del disegno (Milan 1805) and a Saggio di ricerche intorno all'armonia cromatica naturale e artificiale, in Memorie dell'i. r. Istituto Lombardo del Regno Lombardo-Feneto, 2 [1821], pp. 277–316).
He was a collector of works and objects of art and formed a notable collection of drawings (now in the gallery in Venice).