Page:Biographical catalogue of the principal Italian painters.djvu/201

 170 SOLAEI--SOLARIO. scholar of Gaudenzio Ferrari; which appears to be inconsistent with his time and with his style, which has UtUe of the cinquecento character of form, but much of the school of Leo- nardo of Milan. Andrea was engaged at Gaillon, by Charles d'Amboise, in 1509, at the then high salary of 20 sous per day, worth about a pound sterling of our money. Works. Pavia, in the new sacristy of the Certosa, the Assumption of the Virgin, with Saints, left unfinished by Andrea, and completed by Bernardino Campi. Paris, Louvre, Virgin and Child (la Vierge au Coussin vert), formerly attributed to Leonardo; col- lection of Count Pourtales, Virgin and Child (1507). The Portrait of Charles d'Amboise, Governor of Milan, to Louis XII., is also now attributed to this painter. Berlin Gallery, Christ bearing his Cross. ( Vasari, Mundler, Deville.) SOLABIO, Antonio, called Lo Zm- OARO, the Gipsy; his father was a travelling smith ; (. at Solario, in the Venetian State (?), or, according to Do- minici, in Civita, in the Abruzzi, about 1382, d, at Naples, 1455. Neapolitan School. The story of Solario is some- what similar to that of Quinten Metsys, the smith of Antwerp. He has been generally considered, from the state- ment of Dominici, to have been a Neapolitan; but Moschini discovered a picture in the possession of the Abbate Celotti, of Venice (engraved by Bosini), inscribed Antonius de So- lario, Venetus. He appears to have been at first a smith, and worked in the house of Colantonio del Fiore, where he fell in love with the painter's daughter, and eventually turned painter himself in order to win her. He be- came accordingly for some years the scholar of Lippo Dalmasio, at Bo- logna; and he subsequently studied the works of the Vivarini, at Venice ; those of Galasso, in l^errara ; those of Lorenzo di Bicci, at Florence; and those of Vittore Pisanello and of Gen- tile da Fabriano, at Borne. He soon distinguished himself on his return to Naples, from which he had been ab- sent nine or ten years, and was accepted with pride by Colantonio for a son-in- law. Colantonio's daughter is represented in the picture of the Madonna en- throned, and surrounded by Saints, now in the Stuc^ Gallery, at Naples. Solario was of a naturalist tendency ; adopting art for its own sake, the traditionary influence would be less in him than in the schoolmen; and accordingly we find, in some respects, much that is new in his treatment. His heads are full of life, quite in- dividual in character, modem in cos- tume, and he paid more attention probably to his landscape backgrounds than any of his contemporaries ; there is much of the Van Eyck school in his works. His principal work was executed in the court of the monastery of San Severino, at Naples; there are here twenty large f^scoes, representing scenes from the Life of St. Benedict, but now much damaged and much painted over. They are ^ simple and very clever compositions,*' says Eng- ler, " with no very grand type of heads, but of delicate modelling and good colouring. They are particularly dis- tinguished by the fine landscape back- grounds, a very rare accompaniment to Italian frescoes, and not to be found in such perfection elsewhere, at this early period." D'Aloe, who has lately (1846) published a monograph on these firescoes, illustrated with eighteen plates, speaks of them as the most beautiful and perfect works of their class in Italy. The Neapolitans are proud of Sola- rio, and it is possible that several of