Giuseppe Bossi attrib

GIUSEPPE BOSSI attributed to ALLEGORY OF GLORY (OR ITALY?) GIUSEPPE BOSSI Busto Arsizio 1777 – Milan 1815 Pen and brown ink with sepia wash on paper 19.5 × 15.5 cm / 7.7 × 6.1 inches, with antique frame 31 × 25.5 cm / 12.2 × 10 inches PROVENANCE Private collection, France Giuseppe Bossi was one of the most refined protagonists of Lombard Neoclassicism. Born in 1777 in Busto Arsizio and prematurely deceased at the age of only 38, he left a surprisingly coherent and cultured body of work, animated by a profound patriotism and an authentic veneration for the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci. Trained at the Brera Academy and active in Rome between 1795 and 1801, Bossi perfected his study of anatomy and drawing from life, eventually forming a friendship with Antonio Canova, who portrayed him in a celebrated bust. During his stay in Lyon in 1802, he met Jacques-Louis David, but chose a softer, more Italian, and less rigidly archaeological stylistic path. Secretary of the Brera Academy between 1802 and 1807, Bossi was a protagonist of the academic reorganization desired by the Napoleonic regime, signing with Barnaba Oriani the new statute of the academies of Milan, Venice, and Bologna. He de facto founded the Pinacoteca di Brera, enriched by the suppression of convents and the collection of sacred artworks. In 1805, on the occasion of Napoleon's visit to Milan, he presented ambitious works such as Aurora and Night, Oedipus and Creon, and The Italian Parnassus at Brera. At the behest of Viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais, he created a copy of Leonardo's Last Supper for its translation into mosaic (now in the Minoritenkirche in Vienna), and another oil version preserved in Brera. Bossi was also an important collector of drawings, books, coins, and sculptural casts from Rome, Paris, and Florence. He owned the most famous drawing by Leonardo – The Vitruvian Man. He was the author of fundamental theoretical works such as Del Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci (1810), which deeply impressed Goethe, Delle opinioni di Leonardo intorno alla simmetria de’ corpi umani (1811), and Del tipo dell’arte della pittura (1816, posthumous). His diary (1807–1815) is today an essential source for understanding the artistic life of the Napoleonic era. The drawing presented here, of delicate monochrome workmanship, depicts a seated female figure raising a laurel wreath, the symbol par excellence of Glory. Next to her, cherubs and cupids populate the bucolic scene, while another putto offers her a crown from above, sitting among the branches. The architecturally centered composition and the soft and evanescent sepia wash fully recall the Lombard neoclassical graphic language. The hypothesis that this is not only Glory but also an Allegory of Italy is based on the evident symbolic ambiguity of the subject: in the height of the Napoleonic period, the personification of Glory could easily overlap with that of the nascent Nation, dear to Bossi and his contemporaries. The idea of a new Italy, heroic and enlightened, united intellectuals and artists such as Canova, Appiani, Parini, Manzoni, and Foscolo. In this context, even a solitary and silent figure like this can prove to be charged with civil and patriotic meanings. The drawing, therefore, belongs to that rare category of works that, behind the apparent decorative simplicity, conceal a refined interplay of meanings and cultured references. A fragile but precious trace of an artist who disappeared too soon, and of an era in which art and national idea were deeply intertwined.