Giovanni Antonio Moschini

Giovanni Antonio Moschini or Giannantonio Moschini (June 28, 1773 - July 8, 1840) 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 began his studies in a school of the Jesuits. In 1790, he joined with the reformed minor orders (Franciscan Order) but soon left in part because of his affection for art, in part due to his poor health (he was defective in walking). In 1791, he joinded the Somaschian Congregation, and assigned a teaching post in the seminary at San Cipriano in Murano (1794). 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(destroyed during the Napoleonic occupation).

His early authorship, related to ecclesiastical training, supported the need to study the national Italian language in an oration delivered in 1799. He translated the compendium of Antonio Landi's History of Italian Literature by Girolamo Tiraboschi (Venice 1801-05), Collaborating in this with the work of the aristocratic Paduan siblings Girolamo and Nicolò da Rio in their Giornale dell’italiana letteratura. They published four volumes of Venetian literature. The work was dedicated to Michiel, a patrician and art patron from Pauda, who established in his villa a salon for discussion and renaissance of the art, culture, and literature of Venice.

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