Gaetano Meo

Gaetano Giuseppe Faostino Meo (1849, Basilicata, Italy – 16 January 1925, London, United Kingdom) was an Italian-British artist's model, landscape painter, and a noted craftsman in mosaic and stained glass. His unpublished autobiography is a useful source for art historians of the Aesthetic Movement and Edwardian Era. Model He was a son of Rocco Meo, an Italian shepherd of Greek descent whose surname was probably a diminutive version of Bartolomeo, and Maria Francesca Meo (nee Pignone). He had at least three elder brothers and a younger sister, and grew up in the town of Laurenzana, in Basilicata, southern Italy. In 1864, Meo (age 15) and an older brother walked from Naples to Paris. Playing harp and lute, they supported themselves as street musicians while saving money for passage to the United States. By 1866, Meo was posing as an artist's model in Paris. The pair lacked passports, and were smuggled into the United Kingdom aboard a freighter from Boulogne. Meo remained in London, but his brother continued on to America. Alone in London, Meo sought to play his harp in Italian restaurants, a safer place than busking in the streets, where he was more likely to be arrested by police, and deported. Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon claimed to have discovered the 18-year-old playing harp in the streets. "Meo represented a form of classical southern beauty much sought after in paintings of scenes from Greek mythology." In 1867, in Rome, Solomon painted a three-quarter-length watercolor of another model dressed as Bacchus. That same year, in London, he painted a head-and-bust oil portrait of Meo as Bacchus. Meo posed for other British painters such as Ford Madox Brown, Edward Burne-Jones, Luke Fildes, Henry Holiday, Henry Holland (1839–1927), Frederic Leighton, Edwin Long, George Heming Mason, William Blake Richmond, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and sculptor Hamo Thornycroft. By 1870, he was also working as Rossetti's studio assistant.