Antonio Solario

Antonio Solario (1465–1514) was born at Civita d'Antino in the Abruzzi and died in Naples. Very little else about his life is securely documented — he was long known simply as *Lo Zingaro*, "the gypsy", on the strength of a biographical tradition that later scholarship has largely dismantled. What survives is the work. He painted in southern Italy in a manner that combines Venetian colour with Netherlandish precision, and his major surviving commission is the fresco cycle on the life of Saint Benedict in the cloister of Santi Severino e Sossio in Naples. Three works here: Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Ursula, and The Virgin and Child with Saint John.