Life

John Charles Felix Rossi was born at Nottingham on 8 March 1762. His father, an Italian from Siena, was a quack doctor at Nottingham, and afterwards at Mountsorrell, Leicestershire. Rossi was sent to the studio of Giovanni Battista Locatelli, an Italian sculptor working in London. On completing his apprenticeship he remained with his master for wages of eighteen shillings a week, until he found more lucrative employment at Coade and Seeley

Eleanor Coade

Eleanor Coade was a devout Baptist and remained unmarried until her death on 16 November 1821 in Camberwell Grove, Camberwell, London. Her obituary notice was published in The Gentleman's Magazine which declared her ‘the sole inventor and proprietor of an art which deserves considerable notice’...

's artificial stone works at Lambeth.

He entered the of the Royal Academy

Royal Academy

The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 Schools in 1781, and won the silver medal in November of that year In 1784 he won the gold medal for a group showing Venus conducting Helen to Paris. In 1785 he won the travelling studentship, and went to Rome for three years, during which he executed a Mercury in marble, and a reclining figure of Eve. By 1788 he was modelling figures for the Derby

Derby Porcelain

The production of Derby porcelain dates from the first half of the 18th century, although the authorship and the exact start of the production remains today as a matter of conjecture. The oldest remaining pieces in the late 19th century bore only the words «Darby» and «Darbishire» and the years...

 porcelain factory; his name is recorded in connection with figures ordered by the clockmaker Benjamin Vulliamy

Benjamin Vulliamy

Benjamin Vulliamy , was a clockmaker responsible for building the Regulator Clock, which, between 1780 and 1884, was the official regulator of time in London.- Biography :...

, some of them based on Vulliamy's own drawings. Around 1790 he went into business in partnership with James Bingley, a London mason, producing work in a form of terracotta or artificial stone

Artificial stone

Artificial stone is a name for various kinds of synthetic stone products used from the 18th century onward. They have been used in building construction, civil engineering work, and industrial uses such as grindstones....

. Their works include the statues of Music and Dancing for the Assembly Rooms

The City Rooms (Leicester)

The City Rooms is located in the heart of the City of Leicester in England. It has been designated by English Heritage as a grade I listed building....

 at Leicester (1796). The partnership was dissolved in December 1800.

In 1800 he made an artificial stone folly in the form of a "Hindu temple" at Melchet Park, near Romsey

Romsey

Romsey is a small market town in the county of Hampshire, England.It is 8 miles northwest of Southampton and 11 miles southwest of Winchester, neighbouring the village of North Baddesley...

  to the designs of Thomas Daniell

Thomas Daniell

Thomas Daniell was an English landscape painter.-Life:Thomas Daniell was born in 1749 at the Chertsey inn, kept by his father, and was apprenticed to an heraldic painter. Daniell, however, was animated with a love of the romantic and beautiful in architecture and nature. Up to 1784, he painted...

. It was built a tribute to Warren Hastings

Warren Hastings

Warren Hastings PC was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.-Early life:...

, and contained his bust, rising out of a lotus flower, on a pedestal.

In 1809 Rossi worked with John Flaxman

John Flaxman

John Flaxman was an English sculptor and draughtsman.-Early life:He was born in York. His father was also named John, after an ancestor who, according to family tradition, had fought for Parliament at the Battle of Naseby, and afterwards settled as a carrier or farmer in Buckinghamshire...

 on two friezes for the facade of the Covent Garden Theatre. He carved one, of Ancient Drama, from a model by Flaxman. For the other, of Modern Drama, he worked from Flaxman's drawings, making a model himself, before carving it in stone. For the south wing of the theatre, he made a seven foot tall statue of Tragedy a pendant to Flaxman's Comedy. He also made the caryatids for William and Henry Inwood's Greek revival St Pancras New Church

St Pancras New Church

St Pancras Parish Church, sometimes referred to as St Pancras New Church to distinguish it from St Pancras Old Church, is a 19th century Greek Revival church in London, England.-Location:...

 (1819–22). Based on those at the Erechtheum

Erechtheum

The Erechtheion is an ancient Greek temple on the north side of the Acropolis of Athens in Greece.-Architecture:The temple as seen today was built between 421 and 406 BC. Its architect may have been Mnesicles, and it derived its name from a shrine dedicated to the legendary Greek hero Erichthonius...

 in Athens, they were of terracotta, built up in sections cemented around cast iron columns.

He made several monuments of military and naval heroes for St. Paul's Cathedral, including those of Marquis Cornwallis

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis

Charles Cornwallis, 1st Marquess Cornwallis KG , styled Viscount Brome between 1753 and 1762 and known as The Earl Cornwallis between 1762 and 1792, was a British Army officer and colonial administrator...

, Lord Rodney

George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney

George Brydges Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney, KB was a British naval officer. He is best known for his commands in the American War of Independence, particularly his victory over the French at the Battle of the Saintes in 1782...

, Lord Heathfield

George Augustus Eliott, 1st Baron Heathfield

George Augustus Eliott, 1st Baron Heathfield, KB was a British Army officer who took served in three major wars during the eighteenth century. He rose to distinction during the Seven Years War when he fought in Germany and participated in the British attacks on Belle Île and Cuba...

, General Le Marchant, and Captain Robert Faulkner. Several of these were elaborate compositions in the grand manner; Cornwallis stands on a pedestal above the three figures representing Britannia and the rivers Begareth and Ganges, denoting the British empire in Asia. In the monument to Captain Faulkner, Neptune is seated on a rock, in the act of catching the naked figure of a dying sailor, while Victory is about to crown him with laurel. Lord Rodney is represented with allegorical figures of Fame and History.

In 1816 he was one of the experts questioned by a select committee of the House of Commons enquiring into whether the government should purchase the sculptures from the Parthenon

Parthenon

The Parthenon is a temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, whom the people of Athens considered their virgin patron. Its construction began in 447 BC when the Athenian Empire was at the height of its power. It was completed in 438 BC, although...

 then in the possession of Lord Elgin

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin

Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin and 11th Earl of Kincardine was a Scottish nobleman and diplomat, known for the removal of marble sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens. Elgin was the second son of Charles Bruce, 5th Earl of Elgin and his wife Martha Whyte...

. He told the committee that they were the best sculptures he had ever seen, superior both to the Apollo Belvedere

Apollo Belvedere

The Apollo Belvedere or Apollo of the Belvedere—also called the Pythian Apollo— is a celebrated marble sculpture from Classical Antiquity. It was rediscovered in central Italy in the late 15th century, during the Renaissance...

 and the Laocoön

Laocoön and his Sons

The statue of Laocoön and His Sons , also called the Laocoön Group, is a monumental sculpture in marble now in the Vatican Museums, Rome. The statue is attributed by the Roman author Pliny the Elder to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes: Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus...

.

The Earl of Egremont

George Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont

George O'Brien Wyndham, 3rd Earl of Egremont was a British peer. A direct descendant of Sir John Wyndham, he succeeded to his father's titles in 1763 at the age of 12, inheriting estates at Petworth, Egremont, Leconfield and land in Wiltshire and Somerset. He later inherited the lands of the Earl...

 commissioned Rossi to execute several works for Petworth

Petworth House

Petworth House in Petworth, West Sussex, England, is a late 17th-century mansion, rebuilt in 1688 by Charles Seymour, 6th Duke of Somerset, and altered in the 1870s by Anthony Salvin...

, including Celadon and Amelia (c.1821) and the British Pugilist or Athleta Britannicus (1828), a statue of a boxer, almost two metres tall, carved from a single piece of marble. He executed a colossal Britannia for the Exchange at Liverpool, and a statue of the poet Thomson for Sir Robert Peel. The bust of Lord Thurlow at Burlington House and a bronze bust of James Wyatt in the National Portrait Gallery are also by Rossi.

The Prince Regent

George IV of the United Kingdom

George IV was the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and also of Hanover from the death of his father, George III, on 29 January 1820 until his own death ten years later...

 appointed Rossi his sculptor, and employed him in the decoration of Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace, in London, is the principal residence and office of the British monarch. Located in the City of Westminster, the palace is a setting for state occasions and royal hospitality...

, where he made chimneypieces, a frieze of the Seasons to his own design, and others friezes to the designs of John Flaxman. He also made sculpture for the Marble Arch

Marble Arch

Marble Arch is a white Carrara marble monument that now stands on a large traffic island at the junction of Oxford Street, Park Lane, and Edgware Road, almost directly opposite Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park in London, England...

, originally built as an entrance to the palace. When the planned height of the arch was reduced, some of Rossi’s work became surplus to requirements, and was instead used on the National Gallery

National gallery

The National Gallery is an art gallery on Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom.National Gallery may also refer to:*Armenia: National Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan*Australia:**National Gallery of Australia, Canberra...

.
Rossi was also sculptor in ordinary to William IV.

Rossi became an associate of the Royal Academy in 1798, and a member in 1802. He retired from the Royal Academy with a pension shortly before his death at St. John's Wood on 21 February 1839. In later life he suffered from ill-health and financial difficulties. He did not exhibit at the academy after 1834, and in 1835 the works which remained at his studio in Lisson Grove were exhibited prior to their sale by auction. An obituary in the Art-Union noted " Mr Rossi has bequeathed to his family nothing but his fame". He married twice and had eight children by each wife.