Antonio Solario
Antonio Solario (active perhaps 1502 – 1518), also known as Lo Zingaro (The Gypsy), Antonio de/da Solario etc, was an Italian painter of the Venetian school, who worked in Naples, the Marche and possibly England. His career is obscure, largely pieced together from surviving works, and at one time his existence was doubted.[1]
He was possibly born and probably trained in Venice, and signed the Withypool Altarpiece "Antonius Desolario, Venetus 1514"; this includes a donor portrait and the heraldry of the London merchant Paul Withypool. This work and other references to works in England by John Leland a few decades later are the evidence for his putative English visit. The altarpiece is in the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery who own the main panel; the wings have been loaned by the National Gallery,[2] who also have a Virgin and Child.[3] There is a similar but smaller panel of the Madonna and Child with a Donor in the National Museum of Capodimonte at Naples.[4] All include charming small landscapes seen through windows in a wall behind the figures.
He is first recorded at Fermo in 1502, and last (rather questionably) in Montecassino in 1518;[5] if this last is excluded his last known date is 1514. In Naples his main work was in the cloister of the monastery of St Severino (now the State Archives), twenty large frescoes illustrating the life of St Benedict, which are open to the elements though covered and are now greatly decayed; they present a vast variety of figures and details, with dexterous modeling and coloring. These were painted in the first years of the century. Sometimes, however, Solario's color is crude, and he generally shows weakness of draughtsmanship in hands and feet. His tendency is that of a naturalist the heads lifelike and individual, and the landscape backgrounds better invented and cared for than in any contemporary.
His works are capable of being confused with some of those of his contemporary, the Milanese follower of Leonardo da Vinci Andrea Solario, to whom he was not related but who he probably met and was influenced by. The portrait of Charles II d'Amboise in the Louvre, who now attribute it as a copy of a work by Andrea, is a case in point.[6]
The confused biography of Solario by Bernardo de' Dominici (1683–1759), the "Neapolitan Vasari", in his Vite dei Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Napolitani 1742, included the information that Solario was born, probably in Abruzzo, in about 1382, the son of a tinker, and, after a romantic interlude, became the son-in-law of Colantonio, the leading artist in Naples in the mid-15th century. His date of death was given as 1455.[7] It took until the early 20th century or later to dispel this wholly mistaken chronology.
Footnotes
- ^ Davies, 292; Ettore Modigliani, A Madonna by Antonio da Solario, and the Frescoes of SS. Severino e Sosio at Naples, The Burlington Magazine, Vol. 11, No. 54 (Sep., 1907), pp. 376-377+381-382, JSTOR goes into some of the issues.
- ^ National Gallery Loan
- ^ Marks, 275; Davies, 292-294; images of this and other works
- ^ Spinosa, 79
- ^ Davies, 292
- ^ Louvre
- ^ This account summarized
References
- Davies, Martin, National Gallery Catalogues: Catalogue of the Earlier Italian Schools, National Gallery Catalogues, London 1961, reprinted 1986, ISBN 0901791296
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
{{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty|title=(help) - Marks, Richard and Williamson, Paul, eds. Gothic: Art for England 1400-1547, 2003, V&A Publications, London, ISBN 1851774017
- Nicola Spinosa (ed), The National Museum of Capodimonte, Electa Napoli, 2003, ISBN 8851000077
