Portrait of a Man

Giuseppe Bossi (1777-1815)
XIX secolo, Oil on canvas

Giuseppe Bossi was a passionate custodian of the glories of the Renaissance, a fascinating orator, a bibliophile, a collector, a man of the world, a poet, and above all a painter, who, despite his short life, left a strong mark on Italian artistic culture between the 18th and 19th centuries, including in the field of museography. In fact, he supported the 1803 reform of the Statutes of the Brera Academy (of which he had been secretary for two years), which enabled the Academy itself and the nascent Pinacoteca to become two of the most important institutions in northern Italy, promoting the establishment of neoclassical culture of which he was a proponent, together with Antonio Canova (whom he greatly admired), Pelagio Palagi, Felice Giani, and Pompeo Marchesi. Giuseppe Bossi also supported a civic interpretation of art in his 1805 essay Sulla utilità politica delle arti del disegno (On the Political Utility of the Art of Drawing): in it, he upheld the value of art as a means of instilling virtue; he also worked on the almost complete publication of Leonardo's 'Treatise on Painting', to which he applied himself with philological rigour. He painted works of a historical nature from the Napoleonic era as well as magnificent portraits, in which he emphasized the expression of the psychology of his subjects. This portrait of a young man in the collection has been attributed to him (or to a painter of his circle) due to certain stylistic traits, such as the background colour and the thick paint applied with quick brushstrokes that also allow the texture of the canvas to be seen: a style almost too daring for another proponent of the Italian neoclassical manner.