(b Messina, c. 1430; d Messina, between 14 and 25 Feb
1479).
Italian painter. Southern Italian school. He was the greatest Sicilian artist of the 15th century
and the only one to achieve international renown. His work combines Italianate
concerns for form, structure and measured space with a south Netherlandish
interest in the detailed depiction of surface and texture. Antonello is
traditionally credited with the introduction into Italian art of the systematic
use of oil glazing, developed in northern Europe by Jan van Eyck. His visit to
Venice in 1475–6 enabled the technique to be disseminated there, and this had a
crucial effect on the art of Giovanni Bellini and on late 15th-century Venetian
painting in general. Antonello painted fashionable portraits as well as
religious works, and his reputation among contemporaries must have been largely
based on his skills in this field: he was instrumental in establishing a new,
vital type of portraiture in Italy, again based on south Netherlandish models.
He also played an important role in the development of the Venetian Renaissance
altarpiece. Antonello established a workshop in Messina, in which his son
JACOBELLO D’ANTONIO and his nephews Antonio and Pietro DE SALIBA and SALVO
D’ANTONIO participated. In the work of these Antonelleschi, the
provincial inheritance of his art can be seen.
Christ at the Column (detail)
c. 1475-1479
Musee du Louvre, Paris
Crucifixion
1475
Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Antwerp
San Cassiano Altar
1475-76
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna
Portrait of a Man (Il Condottiere)
1475
Musee du Louvre, Paris
Crucifixion
1475
National Gallery, London
The Dead Christ Supported by an Angel
1475-78
Museo del Prado, Madrid
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