Biography

Italian sculptor, part of a family of artists, the son of the sculptor Simone Mosca. He also worked in Orvieto, and he may have completed his father's unfinished commissions. For the cathedral there he executed a nude statue of St Sebastian and figures of St Peter and St Paul. He also executed statues for Pisa Cathedral (a Virgin and Child and Angel in the chapel of the Annunciation) and in 1577 travelled to Parma, where he was employed briefly by the Farnese as court sculptor. A marble relief of Diana and Acteon (Florence, Bargello) and a free-standing group of Atalanta and Meleager (Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) reflect Francesco's indebtedness to mid-16th-century Mannerism.