Niccolò Antonio Colantonio

Colantonio (born Niccolò Antonio) was an Italian

Early Renaissance

.

Life

Details of his life are obscure, though the Neapolitan

René d'Anjou, who ruled in Naples between 1438 and 1442. His last recorded commission is one by Queen Isabella in 1460, unless he is the Colantonio paid for decorating a room in the Castel Capuano in 1487. However Summonte says that he died young.^[1]

Style

His paintings show the mingling of several cultures, as

Valencian Jacomart, Burgundy, Provence, and Flanders. He synthesised his own style from all these sources and he was one of the first artists in Italy to learn the techniques of Early Netherlandish painting. He may have learnt these techniques from the Flemish artist Barthélemy d'Eyck — a putative relative of Jan van Eyck

— who seems to have been in Naples around 1440.

Main works

His main surviving works are two large

Minor Friars and the Poor Clares. The fresco can be seen in the monastery Museum. The Colantonio painting hangs in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, along with Saint Jerome in His Study, full of Netherlandish detail, which was also part of the altarpiece. This was strongly influenced by a Jan van Eyck depiction of the same subject, then belonging to King Alfonso and located in Naples. Other smaller panels are in various other collections.^[2]

The second altarpiece still hangs in the church of

St Vincent Ferrer in eleven scenes. It includes figures which are portraits of Isabella and other members of the royal family.^[3]

Also attributed to Colantonio is a Deposition executed for San Domenico Maggiore, which draws on Rogier van der Weyden’s tapestries of scenes from the Passion (untraced), now lost but with some of the compositions known, which were then hanging in the Castel Nuovo in Naples.^[4]

Attributed works

There is a small Crucifixion in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid that has been attributed to Colantonio by Roberto Longhi and various other experts (mostly Italian), and by others to Antonello, but is currently attributed to an "Anonymous Valencian Artist" by the museum.^[5]

Possible Apprentices

Outside Naples, he is known mainly for having been the teacher of the Sicilian Antonello da Messina, as Summonte records, probably some time between 1445 and 1455, who spread elements of his style, and northern oil painting technique, to other parts of Italy. Another pupil was Angiolo Franco of Naples. The important Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete may also have been a pupil.