Scholars of sixteenth-century Italian art tend to associate Giovanni Antonio Dosio above all with his drawings, from the celebrated vedute published in Bernardo Gamucci’s 1565 guidebook Le antichità di Roma to the collections at the Uffizi published by Franco Borsi in 1976. Yet early modern accounts indicate that Dosio was also involved in a variety of design ventures. Gamucci, praising him for the extraordinary archaeological discovery of the Forma Urbis Romae in 1562, described him as a “virtuous youth, an architect, and an antiquarian of great promise” (“giovane virtuoso, architetto e antiquario di non poca espettatione”). In 1584 Dosio’s first biographer, Raffaello Borghini, attributed numerous sculptures to him, along with the restoration of antiquities, the execution of stucco decorations, and the design of “many buildings.” The impressive volume under consideration here, published to coincide with the newly documented anniversary of Dosio’s death at Caserta in 1611, surveys the full scope...

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