Antonio Solario (probably active c.1502 - 1518)

• Also known the nickname Lo Zingaro ("The Gypsy").
• Was an Italian painter.
• Solario was possibly born and probably trained in Venice.
• He is first recorded at Fermo in 1502, and last in Montecassino in 1518; if this last is excluded his last known date is 1514.
• In Naples, his main work were twenty large frescoes illustrating the Life of St Benedict in the cloister of the monastery of Santi Severino e Sossio (now the State Archives).
• Solario signed the Withypool Altarpiece "Antonius Desolario, Venetus 1514"; this includes a donor portrait and the heraldry of the London merchant Paul Withypool.
• The only biography of Solario written was penned by Bernardo de' Dominici (1683–1759), the "Neapolitan Vasari", who wrote an often confused and error-ridden Vite dei Pittori, Scultori, ed Architetti Napolitani.
• It states that Solario was born in 1382, probably in Abruzzo.
• He is called the son of a tinker, and, after a romantic interlude, became son-in-law of Niccolò Antonio Colantonio, the leading artist in mid-15th-century Naples.
• Dominici claims Solario died in 1455.
• The erroneous chronology was not clarified until the 20th century.
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