**Benigno Bossi** (1727–1792) was an Italian engraver, painter, and stucco artist born in Arcisate near Milan. He was the son of Pietro Luigi Bossi, a noted artist. Intended for painting studies under Pompeo Batoni, Bossi instead followed advice from Anton Raphael Mengs and Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich to focus on engraving after Batoni’s death.

He spent time in Nuremberg and Dresden before the Seven Years’ War forced his departure from Saxony. In 1760 he settled in Parma, where he enjoyed ducal patronage and remained for the rest of his life. His multifaceted practice encompassed etching, painting, and especially stucco decoration, reflecting the refined neoclassical tastes of the period while drawing on earlier Italian traditions.

Bossi’s most celebrated achievement is the elaborate stucco decoration of the Sala degli Uccelli in Parma’s Palazzo del Giardino, featuring more than 250 individualized roundels of birds. Among his prints are a self-portrait, a *Presentation in the Temple* (1755), series of heads and allegorical subjects, *Mascarade à la Grecque* and *Suite des Vases* after Ennemond Alexandre Petitot, *Trophies* (1771), *Attributes of the Seasons* (1770), and twenty-nine plates after drawings by Parmigianino.

His engravings and stucco works are held in major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Bossi’s legacy endures through his precise, inventive prints and the lively naturalism of his Parma decorations, which continue to exemplify eighteenth-century Italian decorative arts.