Gaetano Meo
Gaetano Giuseppe Faostino Meo (1849 – 16 January 1925) was an Italian-British artist's model, landscape painter, and a noted craftsman in mosaic and stained glass.
[4] 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.
[7] Meo posed for other British painters such as Ford Madox Brown,[2] Edward Burne-Jones,[2] Luke Fildes,[2] Henry Holiday,[2] Henry Holland (1839–1927),[2] Frederic Leighton,[2] Edwin Long,[2] George Heming Mason,[2] William Blake Richmond,[2] Dante Gabriel Rossetti,[2] and sculptor Hamo Thornycroft.
[9] Burne-Jones's innovation was to portray the moment of transformation, when the branches entangling Demophoön suddenly become the arms of Phyllis embracing him.
[12] He likely posed for the three muscular angels guarding the funeral bier of a shrouded female corpse in The Watchers[b]—thought to be Richmond's elegy to Charlotte.
[13] Meo later assisted Richmond on murals, acted as his business manager in negotiations with clients, and for more than ten years led the team that executed his mosaics at St. Paul's Cathedral.
[2] Under William Blake Richmond's instruction, Meo became a proficient landscape painter and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts.
"Holiday was chief designer for the stained-glass makers James Powell & Sons (Whitefriar's Glass) from 1863 to 1891, and from 1875 he employed Meo in his cartoons.
[6] To celebrate Meo's naturalization, Holiday hosted a party, that was attended by friends, artists and art patrons, including the Duke of Devonshire.
Meo also assisted Richmond on three stained-glass windows for the Lady Chapel of Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street (1905–10).
[23] The following year Richmond received the design commission to create neo-Byzantine mosaic murals for the walls and ceiling of the cathedral's choir and apse.
[25] "Richmond chose to abandon the flat surface of mosaicists like Salviati, in favour of a more vibrant treatment, based on the use of jagged, irregular glass, set at angles to the plaster, so that it would catch the light.
[27] Executing the designs of architect Halsey Ricardo, Meo supervised creation of the large mosaic dome for the hall of Debenham House in London, 1912-1913.
[28] Executing the designs of Scottish architect Robert Weir Schultz, Meo led the team in creating the mosaics for the Chapel of St. Andrew and the Saints of Scotland at Westminster Cathedral, 1913-1915.
[29] Executing his own designs, Meo created mosaic panels for the Church of St. John the Baptist in Clayton, West Yorkshire, 1916-1918.
