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Name
Soldi, Andrea
Birth date
c.1703
Death date
1771
Biography
Soldi was born in Florence in 1703. After periods spent in Constantinople and Palestine, he was persuaded to come to England by some English travellers, whose portraits he had painted in Aleppo. He arrived in 1735 and almost immediately found himself with a busy portrait-painting practice. Sometime later, extravagant living appears to have brought about domestic difficulties from which he seems not to have recovered. During the 1760s he exhibited at the Society of Arts and the Free Society. The former, which had made him a Fellow in 1765, provided him at his request with financial help early in 1771. He died shortly thereafter; Sir Joshua Reynolds was party to the fund-raising to defray the costs of his burial.