DOSIO, GIOVANNI ANTONIO. — Architect and sculptor, born in 1535 in Florence or S. Gimignano, died after 1609 in Naples or Rome. He was sixteen when he entered the workshop of Raffaele da Montelupo in Rome to devote himself to sculpture, in which he produced works of no mean merit 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 in the Aracoeli; in these works, however, the architectural elements prevail over the sculptural ones.
A series of drawings (Uffizi) also belongs to the artist’s first Roman period, in which his study is evident not only of ancient monuments, especially the Baths of Diocletian, but also of the architecture of Michelangelo and Bramante. From Rome, in 1576–78, D. sent Niccolò Gaddi drawings for his chapel in S. Maria Novella in Florence; when executed, these drawings reveal his study of Michelangelesque forms. Similar characteristics appear in the Niccolini chapel in S. Croce (1591), whereas in the courtyard of the archbishop’s palace in Florence (1582) and in the Larderel palace, formerly belonging to the Giacomini family, in via Tornabuoni, his style is more refined and elegant and adheres to traditional Florentine, especially Sangallesque, schemes. The characteristics of his art also appear in the oratory of Gesù Pellegrino, known as that of the Pretoni, and, likewise in Florence, in the wooden model for the façade of S. Maria del Fiore preserved in the museum of the Opera del Duomo. Having settled in Naples in 1591, he worked on the transformation of the charterhouse of S. Martino and on the church of the Oratorians, whose works he directed in 1593. In 1609 he was still in Naples, engaged in works on the church of Gesù Nuovo.
D., a student of traditional Florentine forms and of Michelangelo’s work, should be ranked, for the refinement of his taste and the elegance of his forms, among the most distinguished Tuscan masters of the second half of the century.