DOSIO, GIOVANNI ANTONIO. - Architect and sculptor, b. in 1535 at Florence or San Gimignano, d. after 1609 at Naples or Rome. He was sixteen years old when in Rome he entered the workshop of Raffaele da Montelupo to apply himself to sculpture, of which he gave no mediocre proofs in the tombs of Annibal Caro (1566), of the physician L. Pacini in S. Lorenzo in Damaso, in those of Antonio Mazza da Gallese in S. Pietro in Montorio and of the constable Antonio Michal now at the Aracoeli; in these works, however, the architectural elements prevail over the plastic ones.
To the artist's first Roman period there also belongs a series of drawings (Uffizi) in which his study is evident not only of the ancient monuments, above all the Baths of Diocletian, but also of the architectures of Michelangelo and Bramante. From Rome, in 1576-78, D. sent to Niccolò Gaddi drawings for his chapel in S. Maria Novella at Florence, drawings which, once executed, show the study of Michelangelesque forms. Analogous characteristics appear in the Niccolini chapel in S. Croce (1591), while in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal palace of Florence (1582) and in the Palazzo Larderel, formerly of the Giacomini in via Tornabuoni, he is more refined and elegant and adheres to traditional Florentine schemes, above all Sangallesque ones. The characteristics of his art also appear in the oratory of Gesù Pellegrino known as that of the Pretoni, and, again at Florence, in the wooden model for the façade in S. Maria del Fiore preserved in the museum of the Opera del Duomo. Having settled at Naples in 1591, he worked on the transformation of the charterhouse of S. Martino and in the church of the Oratorians, whose works he directed in 1593. In 1609 he was still at Naples, engaged in works in the church of the Gesù Nuovo.
D., a student of traditional Florentine forms and of the work of Michelangelo, must be placed, for the fineness of his taste and the elegance of his forms, among the most distinguished Tuscan masters of the second half of the century.
Bibliography3 works
Emilio Lavagnino