SOLARIO, ANTONIO known as lo ZINGARO. - Painter, active in the last decade of the fifteenth century and the early years of the sixteenth. In his works he combines Venetian, Umbrian, Marchesan, and Lombard elements, while always remaining faithful to his initial, predominantly Venetian training.
The frescoes depicting the Stories of St. Benedict in the cloister of SS. Severino and Sossio in Naples (c. 1495) are collaborative works, preceding the period spent in the Marche, where the painter left the fresco in S. Esuperanzio at Cingoli, the large altarpiece in S. Francesco at Osimo (1503), and the altarpiece of the church of the Carmine at Fermo. The latter is not without Umbrian influences, which become more explicit in the Madonna della misericordia, in the church of the same name at Macerata, and in the Sante in London. Nevertheless, Venetian recollections from Vicenza, derived from Montagna and Fogolino, and reminiscences of Alvise Vivarini always predominate: thus in the Madonna col Bambino e adoratore in Naples, and of Giambellino in the Madonna Wertheimer formerly in Leningrad, with its softer and more blended colour. Signed and dated 1508 is the Head of St. John in the Ambrosiana of Milan, akin to Andrea S., executed with a minute and refined Lombard technique, which recurs in other works such as the Holy Family in Amsterdam and the Salome of the Galleria Doria in Rome, of 1511. - Vedi tav. LIX.