Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/184

ROSSO— ROTARI. 15d soon displayed an original boldness of manner, vigorous, grand, and graceful at the same time. Some of his earliest works were the Assumption of the Vir- gin at the Servi (1513), and the Sposa- lizio at San Lorenzo, still preserved. He painted also at Yolterra ; at Home, in Santa Mana della Pace, and while here in 1527 was made prisoner by the Germans; at Perugia; Borgo San Sepolcro; Arezzo; Citta di Castello; and at Venice : but his works are un- common in Italy, which he left when comparatively young, although 1406 appears to be some years too late for his birth. In 1530 Bosso entered the service of Francis I. of France, with an annual salary of 400 crowns, and a honse in Paris for his residence, but he lived almost exclusively in Fontaine- bleau, where he was employed by Francis to decorate the new palace with paintings and stuccoes : many of these works were destroyed by his rival Primaticcio, and replaced by him with his own works : a few of Bosso's frescoes, however, illustrating the life of Francis, still remain : they were lately restored by the orders of Louis Philippe. His easel pictures are very scarce. In the Louvre is a representa- tion of the Entombment by Bosso, in his later mannered style; it is especial- ly defective in colour, in which Bosso never excelled; the carnations are red, chalky and gray, and the heads uniformly antique, cold, aud mannered. The " Bival Songs of the Muses and the Pierides," in the Louvre, now attri- buted upon good authority to Bosso, is in his earlier and superior manner; it is engraved by Enea Vico as Bosso's ; Felibien had given it the name of Perino del Vaga. In the Pitti palace there is a Madonna and Saints ; and in the Berlin Gallery a representation of the four seasons by II Bosso. He exe- cuted several miniatures for Francis I., and prepared, says Vasari, a work of anatomical drawings for publication. Though Bosso's works are scarce, prints after them are not uncommon, though chiefly by himself and his own scholars of theso-caUed School of Fon* tainebleau, of which Bosso was the founder. Its peculiarly mannered flgures, especially in the proportions, belong perhaps more to Bosso's succes- sor, Primaticcio, who was an imitator of Parmigiano. Bosso's end was miserable ; living in the greatest favour with the King, and more like a prince than an artist, he poisoned himself in the prime of life, in 1541, according to one report, out of jealousy of Prima- ticcio, but, according to Vasari, out of remorse and despair, from having ac* cused of theft and put to the torture his friend and assistant Francesco Pellegrini, who proved to be in- nocent. Francis and the whole court were greatly distressed at the event. Bosso was a man of magnificent pre> sence; he was called Bosso from his red hair : he was architect as well as painter, and had the whole superin* tendence of the construction of the new pal ace at Fontainebleau. ( Vasari. ) BOTABI, II Conte Pietro, b. at Ve- rona, 1707, d. at St. Petersburg, 1762. Venetian School. He was the scholar of Antonio Balestra at Verona, and studied afterwards some time imder Trevisani in Borne, and with Solimena in Naples. He is one of the examples not very rare in the eighteenth century, of a painter succeeding rather through the deficiencies of others than by his own absolute virtues. He was ex- tremely mannered, but displayed con- siderable grace and much general tech- nical ability, except in the department of colouring, in which he wholly failed. He was much employed in Germany, especially in Dresden, Vienna, and Munich ; and he settled finally in St. Petersburg, where he was a great fa- vourite with the Empress Catherine II.