Giannantonio Moschini

Who is Giannantonio Moschini?

Giovanni Antonio Moschini or Giannantonio Moschini was an Italian author and Roman Catholic Somascan priest. He was an art critic who wrote mainly about art and architecture in Venice and the Veneto.

He was born to Jacopo Moschini and Margherita Matti in the parish of San Cassiano in Venice. He was buried in the oratory of the church of Santa Maria della Salute. He begun his studies in a school of the Jesuits. In 1790, he joined with the reformed minor orders but soon left in part because of his affection for art, in part due to his poor health. In 1791, he joinded the Somaschian Congregation, and assigned a teaching post in the seminary at San Cipriano in Murano. In 1796, he was ordained a priest. In 1796, he was given a teaching post in the Somaschi seminary at the church of Salute . This seminary became patriarchal after suppression of other such schools in Torcello and Caorle in 1818.

After the dissolution of the Venetian Republic in 1797, Moschini began to collect a lapidary inscriptions, bas reliefs, busts, and funeral monuments that were removed from the churches with the progressive suppression of orders and deconsecration of churches. They were stored, among other sites, at the cloister of Santa Maria della Salute. In addition the Seminary acquired over 30 thousand volumes and codices. In 1820, Moschini helped identify the remains of Jacopo Sansovino to the baptistery of St Mark's Basilica, after they had been removed from the church of San Geminiano, once facing Piazza San Marco.