Opere varie incise da Benigno Bossi by Benigno Bossi

Opere varie incise da Benigno Bossi 1755 - 1789

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drawing, print, etching, intaglio, engraving

drawing

print

etching

intaglio

history-painting

engraving

Dimensions 17 13/16 × 12 13/16 × 1 7/16 in. (45.24 × 32.54 × 3.65 cm) (overall, closed)

This is “Opere varie incise da Benigno Bossi,” a collection of etchings by Benigno Bossi, an Italian artist who died in 1792. Bossi lived during a transformative period in Europe. As an engraver and painter at the court of Parma, his work was influenced by the shifting social and political landscapes of his time. In this open book, we see an etching featuring a classically draped female figure. She stands beside a column, holding what appears to be a family crest, perhaps symbolizing nobility or lineage. The print is inscribed to Alessandro Sanvitale in Parma in 1772. The use of allegory—the female figure—was a common artistic device. How might her classical dress and idealized form promote an image of timeless virtue, strength, and cultural authority? Bossi's prints offer a glimpse into the visual language of 18th-century Europe, where classical ideals were revived and repurposed to reflect the values of the aristocracy. These images provide insight into the ways identity and power were constructed through art.

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minneapolisinstituteofart over 1 year ago

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Benigno Bossi was a talented, multi-faceted artist active mainly in Parma and Dresden. His main medium was stucco, but he is most widely remembered as a printmaker due to the dissemination of his wares. This album of etchings contains the lion’s share of his mature printed oeuvre, some 180 plates. The etchings speak to his interest in the work of the great Parmese artist Girolamo Francesco Maria Mazzola (a.k.a. Parmigianino) and his collaboration with the exceptionally creative decorative artist and architect Ennemond Alexandre Petitot. In 1761, Bossi began to work on a major stucco project, making trophy decorations for the façade of Church of Saint Peter, working after designs by Ennemond Alexandre Petitot. This was the beginning of a fruitful collaboration. Bossi went on to make many prints after Petitot’s designs, including two fabulous series: one of fantasy vases, the other of costumes based on Greek architecture. The album includes more than 30 of Bossi’s prints based on drawings by Parmigianino. His prints were not exact facsimiles; rather, they were interpretive in nature. In addition to line etching, he employed aquatint and mezzotint and sometimes printed with colored ink to convey the texture, flow, and materials of Parmigianino’s drawings. Bossi also produced a substantial quantity of etchings of his own design, many of them being fantasy heads. Delightful in their own right, they could also provide ideas for painter hoping to populate their works with exotic figures from other times and places.