ron Crown. On the occasion of the visit of
Napoleon I. to Milan in 1805, Bossi exhibited a drawing of the Last
Judgment of Michelangelo, and pictures representing Aurora and Night,
Oedipus and Creon, and the Italian Parnassus. By command of Prince
Eugene, viceroy of Italy, Bossi undertook to make a copy of the Last
Supper of Leonardo, then almost obliterated, for the purpose of getting
it rendered in mosaic. The drawing was made from the remains of the
original with the aid of copies and the best prints. The mosaic was
executed by Raffaelli, and was placed in the imperial gallery of Vienna.
Bossi made another copy in oil, which was placed in the museum of Brera.
This museum owed to him a fine collection of casts of great works of
sculpture acquired at Paris, Rome and Florence. Bossi devoted a large
part of his life to the study of the works of Leonardo; and his last
work was a series of drawings in monochrome representing incidents in
the life of that great master. He left unfinished a large cartoon in
black chalk of the Dead Christ in the bosom of Mary, with John and the
Magdalene. In 1810 he published a special work in large quarto, entitled
_Del Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci_, which had the merit of greatly
interesting Goethe. His other works are _Delle Opinioni di Leonardo
intorno alla simmetria de' corpi umani_ (1811), and _Del Tipo dell' arte
della pittura_ (1816). Bossi died at Milan on the 15th of December 1816.
A monument by Canova was erected to his memory in the Ambrosian library,
and a bust was placed in the Brera.
BOSSU, RENE LE (1631-1680), French critic, was born in Paris on the 16th
of March 1631. He studied at Nanterre, and in 1649 became one of the
regular canons of Sainte-Genevieve. He wrote _Parallele des principes de
la physique d'Aristote et de celle de Rene Descartes_ (1674), and a
_Traite du poeme epique_, highly praised by Boileau, the leading
doctrine of which was that the subject should be chosen before the
characters, and that the action should be arranged without reference to
the personages who are to figure in the scene. He died on the 14th of
March 1680.
BOSSUET, JAQUES BENIGNE (1627-1704), French divine, orator and writer,
was born at Dijon on the 27th of September 1627. He came of a family of
prosperous Burgundian lawyers; his father was a judge of the parliament
(a provincial high court) at Dijon, afterwards at Metz. The boy was sent
to school with the Jesuits of Dijon ti
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