Antonello da Messina | Renaissance painter

Antonello da Messina, (1430, Messina, Sicily - February 19, 1479, Messina), painter who probably introduced oil painting and Flemish pictorial techniques into mid-15th-century Venetian art.

His practice of building form with colour rather than line and shade greatly influenced the subsequent development of Venetian painting.

Little is known of Antonello’s early life, but it is clear that he was trained in Naples, then a cosmopolitan art centre, where he studied the work of Provençal and Flemish artists, possibly even that of Jan van Eyck.

His earliest known works, a Crucifixion (c. 1455) and St. Jerome in His Study (c. 1460), already show Antonello’s characteristic combination of Flemish technique and realism with typically Italian modeling of forms and clarity of spatial arrangement.

In 1457 Antonello returned to Messina, where he worked until 1474.

The chief works of this period, the polyptych of 1473 and the Annunciation of 1474, are relatively conservative altarpieces commissioned by the church, but the Salvator Mundi (1465), intended for private devotions, is bold and simple, showing a thorough understanding of the human form and the depiction of personality.

It was but a short step from the Salvator Mundi to such incisive characterizations of human psychology as seen in Portrait of a Man (c. 1472), a work that presaged the uncanny vitality and meticulous realism of such panels as Portrait of a Condottiere (1475), which established his reputation in northern Italy.

During this period Antonello might have traveled to Rome and come into contact with the works of Fra Angelico and Piero della Francesca.

From 1475-1476 Antonello was in Venice and possibly Milan.

Within a short time of his arrival in Venice, his work attracted so much favourable attention that he was supported by the Venetian state, and local painters enthusiastically adopted his oil technique and compositional style.

In St. Sebastian (c. 1476), his most mature work, Antonello achieved a synthesis of clearly defined space, monumental sculpture-like form, and luminous colour, which was one of the most decisive influences on the evolution of Venetian painting down to Giorgione’s day.

In 1476 he was again in Messina, where he completed his final masterpiece, the Virgin Annunciate (c. 1476). | © Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

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Antonello da Messina, soprannome di Antonio di Giovanni de Antonio (Messina, 1430 - Messina, febbraio 1479), è stato un pittore Italiano🎨

Fu il principale pittore siciliano del Quattrocento, primo nel difficile equilibrio di fondere la luce, l'atmosfera e l'attenzione al dettaglio della pittura fiamminga🎨 con la monumentalità e la spazialità razionale della scuola italiana.

I suoi ritratti sono celebri per vitalità e profondità psicologica.

Durante la sua carriera dimostrò una costante capacità dinamica di recepire tutti gli stimoli artistici delle città che visitava, offrendo ogni volta importanti contributi autonomi, che spesso andavano ad arricchire le scuole locali.

Soprattutto a Venezia rivoluzionò la pittura locale, facendo ammirare i suoi traguardi - ripresi poi dai grandi maestri lagunari - apripista dunque per quella "pittura tonale" dolce e umana che caratterizzò il Rinascimento veneto.