Antonello da Messina

Antonello da Messina (c. 1430–1479) was born in Messina in Sicily, the son of a sculptor who gave him his first training. Around 1450 he was a pupil of Niccolò Colantonio in Naples, where Netherlandish painting was then in fashion, and his early works show that Flemish influence clearly. He returned to Messina in the 1450s, spent 1475–76 in Venice, and was back in Sicily by September 1476. He died in Messina in 1479. Vasari credited him with bringing oil painting to Italy, a claim now regarded as wrong, but he was among the first Italians to master the Eyckian oil technique, possibly through contact with Petrus Christus in Milan. His portraits, shown bust-length against a dark ground rather than in the usual profile, followed a Netherlandish model new to Italy. In Venice his San Cassiano Altarpiece, one of the first large compositions of its kind, proved especially influential, and he is thought to have passed his methods on to Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian painters. Two works here, both from the 1470s: Saint Jerome in His Study and Virgin Annunciate.