Giuseppe Bossi, an Italian painter, born at Busto-Arsizio in August, 1777, died in Milan, Dec. 15, 1815. He studied at the Brera academy and in Rome, and on his return to Milan became secretary of the academy of fine arts, and afterward president of that institution and of those of Venice and Bologna. In 1801 he won a first prize for a picture commemorating the conclusion of peace, and in 1805 he exhibited various works, the best of which was a large cartoon representing the Italian Parnassus, which is in the museum of Milan. For Eugene de Beauharnais he executed a celebrated copy of Leonardo da Vinci's Cena, and published in 1810, as the result of his investigations relating to this famous masterpiece, Libri quattro sul Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci. He also participated in the biography of Leonardo da Vinci, and left an unfinished work on Lombard painters and several poetical effusions. He greatly enlarged and improved the Brera museum and Ambrosian library, and in the latter was placed a monument to him, with a bass relief and a colossal bust by Canova, executed by order of the academy.

He was regarded as one of the most eminent painters of the modern Lombard school.