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Ecce Homo
Photo by New York Scugnizzo
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Due to scant documentary information very little is known about the life of Antonello di Giovanni d'Antonio, better known as Antonello da Messina. As his moniker indicates, he was born in Sicily between 1425 and 1430 at Messina, then a prosperous port city in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. His father, Giovanni d'Antonio, was a stonemason; his mother's name was Garita, possibly a diminutive of Margherita.
Between 1445-55 Antonello traveled to Naples and studied the new technique of oil painting introduced from the Low Countries in the atelier of Niccolò Colantonio (born c. 1420). The Neapolitan was a leading exponent of the Netherlandish (Dutch and Flemish) style of painting; tempera and fresco being the common mediums practiced by painters at the time. Here, Antonello was undoubtedly exposed to the works of Spanish, Provençal and Netherlandish masters, including Jan van Eyck, whose paintings were avidly sought after by the city's patrons.
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Alfonso I, Naples (New York Scugnizzo)
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Naples—recently conquered (1442) by Alfonso I (Alfonso V of Aragon)—was a major European capital and important center for the arts. King Alfonso, called the "Magnanimous" for his generous patronage, continued the city's aggrandizement begun under the reign of the Angevin kings. Many of Europe's preeminent painters, sculptors, architects and poets found favor at the Neapolitan court. Perhaps one of the city's most recognizable historical monuments, the Castel Nuovo and it's extraordinary triumphal arch, originates from this period. Reminiscent of Classical Rome and the Medieval Capuan Gate, the Aragonese Arch is a masterpiece of Renaissance architecture.
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Castel Nuovo and Triumphal Arch, Naples (New York Scugnizzo)
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Antonello returned to his native Sicily in 1457 and opened up his own workshop. He received many commissions, mostly from confraternities, for religious paintings to be used as standards or devotional panels. Among these early works are of course his famous Salting Madonna (National Gallery in London), St. Jerome in the desert and Three Angels visiting Abraham (Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria). He would later take up portrait painting, preferring his sitters in the three-quarter view (possibly inspired by Petrus Christus) rather than the rigid profile poses popular with his Italian contemporaries. The high quality of these early paintings undoubtedly caught the attention of foreign merchants trading in Messina.
In 1475 the Sicilian traveled to Venice where he was commissioned to paint the Madonna and Child with saints for the main altarpiece of the church of San Cassiano. This exceptional painting had a profound impact on the local artists (including the celebrated Giovanni Bellini) and was emulated for several decades.
A common misconception about Antonello is that he “introduced oil painting to Venice.” There is evidence that it was actually Bellini who worked with this medium in Venice before Antonello arrived. However, it is well known that Antonello strongly influenced Venetian artists, Bellini included. Likewise, Antonello’s own works were also influenced by Bellini.
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Portrait of a Man (New York Scugnizzo)
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Antonello's portraits during this period are considered some of his finest and had a great effect on the evolution of the genre in Venice. According to Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550), "...Antonello completed many paintings and portraits for a great number of Venetian noblemen...” Among his other Venetian works are a triptych for the church of San Giuliano, which only the panel depicting Saint Sebastian survives, the so-called Benson Madonna, a Pietà with three Angels, and two versions of The Crucifixion.
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The Virgin Annunciate (Wikimedia Commons)
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Turning down an offer by Duke Galeazzo Maria Sforza of Milan to be his official court portraitist, Antonello returned again to Messina in 1476. Records show that he worked with his relatives in a successful studio, producing many works, including a number of processional standards, across eastern Sicily and Calabria. Unfortunately, most of these paintings did not stand the ravages of time.
Shortly after his return to Sicily Antonello created what is considered by many to be his greatest masterpiece, the Virgin Annunciate (Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo), a strikingly beautiful painting often compared to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.
In 2005 his biographer, Gioacchino Barbera, described it thusly:
"Apart from its sophisticated and masterful composition, the work is surprising in its ability to represent, with such convincing sense of volume and perspective, a type of idealized Mediterranean beauty in an image that is simultaneously abstract and true to life..." (Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master, Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 30)
In his "statement," published in the same museum catalogue, Alessandro Pagano, Sicily's Cultural Commissioner wrote:
"A poignant feature of Antonello's images of the Madonna, beginning with the Virgin Annunciate in the Palazzo Abatellis, is that they convey the innocence and purity of Southern Italian women—a natural beauty that we call 'acqua e sapone' (soap and water)." (Ibid. p.8)
It's believed Antonello died sometime between February 14 and May 11, 1479. Vasari's Lives tells us he died from tuberculosis at the age of 49. His life was short but productive. The innovative Sicilian is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters in all of Italy during the Quattrocento, or fifteenth century.
Antonello's Pietà, now housed in the Prado in Madrid and one of his last paintings, shows the unmistakable influence of Bellini. His son Jacobello, who inherited his father’s workshop, completed it. In filial adulation, Jacobello would sign his paintings, "son of the immortal painter."
Bibliography:
• Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master by Gioacchino Barbera with contributions by Keith Christiansen and Andrea Bayer, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005.
• Art and Architecture in Naples, 1266-1713 edited by Cordelia Warr and Janis Elliott, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
• The Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari, translated by Julia Conaway Bondanella and Peter Bondanella, Oxford University Press, 2008.
