Anthony Toto

Who is Anthony Toto?

Anthony Toto or "Antony", really Antonio di Nunziato d'Antonio, was an Italian painter and architect, a Florentine pupil of Ridolfo Ghirlandajo. He came to England about 1519, and was naturalized in 1543, and was one of a number of foreign artists of the Tudor Court, being appointed Serjeant Painter in 1543. The English evidently found his Italian name too complicated, and he is normally called "Antony Toto" in the records; he was already called "Toto di Nunziato" in Italian records.

His father was Nunziata d'Antonio, a painter who died in Florence in 1525. "Toto" had been signed on in Florence on 28 September 1519 as an assistant to Pietro Torrigiano, who was already in England, but in fact left there for good later that year. Vasari relates that Toto had worked in the shop of Nunziata’s friend Ridolfo Ghirlandaio where he had painted a number of pictures that were sent to England. He had a Florentine colleague Bartolommeo Penni, brother of the much more distinguished Gianfrancesco, Raphael's right hand man, and Luca, a member of the School of Fontainebleau.