Antonello da Messina

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Antonello da Messina
Portrait of Man, possibly a self-portrait
Born
Antonello di Giovanni di Antonio

c. 1425–1430
Messina, Kingdom of Sicily
DiedFebruary 1479 (aged 48–49)
Messina, Kingdom of Sicily
NationalityItalian
Known forPainting
MovementItalian Renaissance

Antonello da Messina (Italian pronunciation:

Early Renaissance
.

His work shows strong influences from Early Netherlandish painting, although there is no documentary evidence that he ever travelled beyond Italy.[2] Giorgio Vasari credited him with the introduction of oil painting into Italy,[3] although this is now regarded as wrong.[4] Unusually for a southern Italian artist of the Renaissance, his work proved influential on painters in northern Italy, especially in Venice.

Biography

Early life and training

St Jerome in His Study
, c. 1475

Antonello was born at Messina around 1429–1431, to Garita (Margherita) and Giovanni de Antonio Mazonus, a sculptor who trained him early on. He and his family resided in the Sicofanti district of the city.[5]

Antonello is thought to have apprenticed in Rome before going to Naples,[5] where Netherlandish painting was then fashionable. According to a letter written in 1524 by the Neapolitan humanist Pietro Summonte, in about 1450 Antonello was a pupil of the painter Niccolò Colantonio in Naples.[6] This account of his training is accepted by most art historians.[7]

Early career

Antonello returned to Messina from Naples during the 1450s.

Sibiu Crucifixion, inspired by Flemish treatments of the subject, which is now in the Muzeul de Artǎ in Bucharest. A Crucifixion in the Royal Museum of Antwerp dates from the same period. These early works shows a marked Flemish influence, which is now understood to be inspired by his master Colantonio and from paintings by Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck that belonged to Colantonio's patron, Alfonso V of Aragon.[citation needed
]

Antonello's Salting Madonna

In his biography of the artist,

linear perspective.[8] Antonello's paintings after that date show an observation of almost microscopic detail and of minute gradations of light on reflecting or light absorbent objects that is very close to the style of the Netherlandish masters, suggesting that Antonello was personally instructed by Christus.[9] Also, the calmer expressions on human faces and calmness in the overall composition of Antonello's works appear to be owing to a Netherlandish influence.[8][full citation needed] He is believed to have shared Van Eyck's techniques with Gentile and Giovanni Bellini.[5]

Between the years of 1456 and 1457, Antonello proved himself to be a master painter in Messina. He also shared his home with Paolo di Ciacio, a student from Calabria.[10] The artist's earliest documented commission, in 1457, was for a banner for the Confraternità di San Michele dei Gerbini in Reggio Calabria, where he set up a workshop for the production of such banners and devotional images.[2] At this date, he was already married, and his son Jacobello had been born.

In 1460, his father is mentioned leasing a

Abraham Served by the Angels and St. Jerome Penitent now in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria
. In 1461 Antonello's younger brother Giordano entered his workshop, signing a three-year contract. In that year Antonello painted a Madonna with Child, now lost, for the Messinese nobleman Giovanni Mirulla.

Historians believe that Antonello painted his first portraits in the late 1460s. They follow a Netherlandish model, the subject being shown bust-length, against a dark background, full face or in three-quarter view,[11] while most previous Italian painters had adopted the medal-style profile pose for individual portraits.[12] John Pope-Hennessy described Antonello as "the first Italian painter for whom the individual portrait was an art form in its own right".[13]

The Virgin Annunciate in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo

Although Antonello is mentioned in many documents between 1460 and 1465, establishing his presence in Messina in those years, a gap in the sources between 1465 and 1471 suggests that he may have spent these years on the mainland.

St. Jerome in His Study also dates from around this time.[14]

Venice

Antonello went to

St. Sebastian. The San Cassiano Altarpiece was especially influential on Venetian painters, as it was one of the first of the large compositions in the sacra conversazione format which was perfected by Giovanni Bellini (Antonello's surviving work in Vienna is only a fragment of a much larger original). It is also likely that Antonello passed on both the techniques of using oil paints[15] and the principles of calmness on subjects' faces and in the composition of paintings to Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian painters during that visit.[16] While in Venice he was offered, but did not accept, the opportunity to become the court portrait painter to the Duke of Milan.[17]

Return to Messina and death

Antonello had returned to Sicily by September 1476.[11] Works from near the end of his life include the famous Virgin Annunciate, now in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, and the San Gregorio Polyptych.

He died at Messina in 1479. His testament dates from February of that year, and he is documented as no longer alive two months later. Some of his last works remained unfinished, but were completed by his son Jacobello.

Crucifixion, Antwerp, detail

Style and legacy

Antonello's style is remarkable for its union of Italian simplicity with Flemish concern for detail. He exercised an enormous influence on Italian painting, not only by the introduction of the Flemish invention, but also by the transmission of Flemish tendencies.[18] However, no school of painting formed after his death, with the exception of the Sicilian Marco Costanzo.

Selected works

References

  1. ^ Memorie istorico-critiche di Antonello degli Antonj pittore Messinese by Tommaso Puccini, Florence 1809.
  2. ^ a b c Barbera 2005, p. 13.
  3. ^ a b Barbera 2005, p. 14.
  4. ^ Campbell, Caroline. "Saint Jerome in his Study' in 10 minutes". YouTube. National Gallery. Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  5. ^
    OCLC 2163980
    .
  6. ^ The letter to the Venetian Marcantonio Michiel, of 20 March 1524, reporting on the state of art in Naples, and works there by Netherlandish painters, dwells upon Colantonio and his Netherlandish technique, which one sees assimilated in the art of Antonello; it was published by Fausto Niccolini, L'arte napoletana del Rinascimento (Naples) 1925:161-63. It is translated in Carol M. Richardson, Kim Woods, and Michael W. Franklin, Renaissance Art Reconsidered: An Anthology of Primary Sources (2007:193-96).
  7. ^ Barbera 2005, p. 15.
  8. ^ a b c Raunch pg. 361
  9. ^ Hartt pg. 562
  10. ^ "Antonello da Messina". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
  11. ^ a b Barbera 2005, p. 23.
  12. ^ a b Barbera 2005, p. 51.
  13. ^ Pope-Hennessy 1966, p. 60.
  14. ^ Barbera 2005, p. 22.
  15. ^ Hartt pg. 563
  16. ^ Hartt pg. 563; Raunch pg. 361
  17. ^ Barbera 2005, p. 29.
  18. ^ Chisholm 1911.

Sources

External links

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