SOLARIO, ANDREA
Painter, born in Milan between 1458 and 1460, younger brother of Cristoforo, whom he followed to Venice around 1490.
The early works of S. are especially influenced by the Venetian environment, not without memories of 15th-century Lombardy; among the oldest are the Bellinesque *Madonna* of the Poldi Pezzoli collection, the Alvisian *Portrait of a Venetian Senator* in the National Gallery, London, with a broad Antonellesque gaze, the *Portrait of a Young Man* in the Brera, the *Portrait* in Boston, the *Ecce Homo* in the Cook Galleries in Richmond and in the Crespi collection in Milan. The first dated and signed work is from 1495, the *Holy Family with St. Jerome* (Brera), still predominantly Venetian; from 1499 the *St. Catherine and St. John the Baptist* in the Poldi Pezzoli, more closely linked to the Leonardesque Lombard school, as is the *Female Portrait* in the Palazzo Venezia Museum and the *Head of St. John the Baptist* in the Louvre (1507). From 1507 to 1509 the painter was in France with Cardinal George d'Amboise, where he decorated with frescoes, now lost, the chapel of his Château de Gaillon in Normandy. Transalpine influences are noted in his later works. In the famous *Madonna* in the Louvre, executed at the Château d'Amboise, known as the “green cushion,” the artist shows a sensitive approach to Leonardo, as in the *Ecce Homo* in the Poldi Pezzoli. Mannerist elements appear in the *Christ Carrying the Cross* in the Borghese Gallery (1511).
SOLARI (SOLARIO), CRISTOFORO, known as IL GOBBO
*Apse of the Cathedral — Como.*
Only a few works as an architect are attributed to him, according to some, including the church of *Santa Maria della Passione* in Milan, with its broad polygonal Bramantesque tiburium, and the apse of the Como cathedral, inspired by designs of Leonardo, whose execution was entrusted to Tommaso Rodari.