DOSIO, GIOVANNI ANTONIO. — Architect and sculptor, born in 1535 in Florence or San Gimignano, died after 1609 in Naples or Rome. At the age of sixteen he entered the workshop of Raffaele da Montelupo in Rome to devote himself to sculpture, in which he produced works of no small 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 at the Aracoeli; in these works, however, architectural elements prevail over plastic ones.
To the artist’s first Roman period also belongs a series of drawings (Uffizi) 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, Dosio sent drawings to Niccolò Gaddi for his chapel in S. Maria Novella in Florence, drawings that were executed showing the study of Michelangelesque forms. Similar characteristics appear in the Niccolini Chapel in S. Croce (1591), while in the courtyard of the archiepiscopal palace in Florence (1582) and in the Palazzo Larderel, formerly the Giacomini residence on Via Tornabuoni, the style is more refined and elegant and adheres to traditional schemes, especially those of the Sangallo family. The characteristics of his art also appear in the Oratory of Gesù Pellegrino, known as dei Pretoni, and, still 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 curtain wall of S. Martino and in the church of the Oratorians, whose construction he directed in 1593. In 1609 he was still in Naples engaged in works in the church of the Gesù Nuovo.
Dosio, a student of traditional Florentine forms and of Michelangelo’s work, should be ranked, for the refinement of taste and elegance of form, among the most distinguished Tuscan masters of the second half of the century.