Antonio Ciccone was born in 1939 in San Giovanni Rotondo (Foggia) Italy. In 1954, with the help of Padre Pio, he went to Florence to study art in the studios of Nerina Simi and Pietro Annigoni, and at the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. From 1963 to 1980 he lived between Italy and the United States. He has had more than 100 solo exhibitions throughout Europe and the U.S. and has executed numerous portraits, painting compositions and landscapes in carbon pencil, China ink, oil, acrylic and fresco. From 1986 to 1987 he produced a major show entitled Padre Pio and the Gargano Landscape that travelled to England and Ireland. The artist has executed some fresco work, including the Nativity, 1987, in Ponte Buggianese, Pistoia.