Antonello da Messina

Antonello was born in the city of Messina in Sicily between 1429 and 1431. Primary education took place in a provincial school, far from the art centers of Italy, where the main landmarks were masters of southern France, Catalonia and the Netherlands. Around 1450 he moved to Naples . In the early 1450s, he studied with Colantonio , a painter associated with Dutch tradition. In the years 1475-1476 Yes, Messina visited Venice, where he received and fulfilled orders, made friends with artists, especially Giovanni Bellini , who took to him to a certain extent the painting technique.

The mature work of Antonello da Messina is a fusion of Italian and Dutch elements. He was one of the first in Italy to work in the technique of pure oil painting, borrowing it from Van Eyck in many ways.

The artist's style is characterized by a high level of technical virtuosity, a careful study of details and an interest in the monumentalism of forms and the depth of the background, characteristic of the Italian school.

In the painting “Dead Christ, Supported by Angels”, figures are clearly looming against an illuminated bright background, where Messina , the artist’s hometown, is dimly distinguished. Iconography and an emotional interpretation of the theme are associated with the work of Giovanni Bellini .

His paintings in Venice are among the best. The Crucifixion (1475, Antwerp ) speaks of the Dutch training of the artist.

In the 1470s, portraits began to occupy a significant place in the work (“Young Man”, c. 1470; “Self-portrait”, c. 1443; “Male Portrait”, 1475, etc.), marked by features of Dutch art: a dark neutral background, accurate transmission facial expressions of the model. His portraiture left a deep mark in Venetian painting at the end of the 15th century. - beginning of the 16th century

He died in Messina in 1479 .

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  Crucifixion . 1475 year. National Gallery . London

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  Mary of the Annunziata. C. 1476, the National Museum. Palermo

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  Crucifixion with Mary and John. 1475. Museum of Fine Arts . Antwerp

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  Mary of the Annunziata. 1473. The old pinakothek . Munich

Portrait Art Antonello

The work of Antonello da Messina is an example of how, in Italian painting since about 1470, new forms of portraiture are distributed in various centers almost simultaneously, sometimes independently of each other, and often due to the establishment of contacts between art schools and the defining role of several leading artists. So, simultaneously with Mantegna in the 1470s on the far outskirts - in Sicily, another major portrait painter Antonello da Messina came forward, who created a number of works that are an example of a three-quarter chest portrait, which for decades determined the main path of development of the Venetian portrait (in addition, he conquered the Venetians, teaching them to paint with oil paints). In the strict sense of the word, he is the first Italian master of easel portrait. He never painted frescoes with hidden portraits and donors in altar paintings. About 10 authentic portraits of him have been preserved, but in the development of easel portraiture of the Early Renaissance, he occupies a very important place ^[1] .

All his surviving works belong to his mature period (Sicily and Venice, 1465-76). He uses one developed formula of portrait composition, without changing it further, in addition, without changing the ideal with which the living model is compared. This was because he relied on the long-established tradition of the Dutch portrait, which he directly applied to the Italian understanding of the image of man. Most likely, the appearance of an easel portrait in his work is directly related to his passion for Dutch painting. The birth of the portrait genre in his work directly coincided with a period of active involvement in the forms and ideals of the Renaissance. Antonello focuses on the most advanced direction of this period - the work of Jan van Eyck , borrowing from him composition, technique and color. Perhaps he made a trip to the Netherlands.

From Eikov's work, he chooses the most concise and plastic solution to the composition - at the same time, and the most emotional. Antonello always writes the model in the chest, with a parapet, always in a headdress and with a look directly at the viewer. He does not write hands and does not depict accessories. Thanks to the parapet in the foreground and the perspective frame, the portrait bust, slightly pushed into the depth, acquires spatiality. The point of view slightly below gives the image a touch of monumentality. The “stone” parapet always shows a crumpled piece of paper, “attached” with a drop of sealing wax, with the inscription “Antonello Messinets wrote me” and the date. The illusion of three-dimensionality is enhanced by a soft light-air environment. The face is facing the light falling from the left, it is subtly modeled by transparent shadows that gradually thicken to the edges of the picture and become completely impenetrable in the background. The closest analogy in the Netherlands to his portraits is the portrait of an unknown in a red turban . Antonello and van Eyck are similar not only in composition, but also in painting, in deep and colorful tones, which are obtained by thin transparent layers of oil; X-rays show that their work is identical in technique. But the method of constructing the pictorial form, used by Antonello, has its own characteristics. His design is deliberately rounded and simplified, unlike the Dutch, he does not study the differences, but generalizes. Details are few, the portraits resemble a round sculpture, which is as if painted - face shapes are stereometrized.

The wash and damage to the upper paint layer in most of Antonello’s works is very strong, and therefore some researchers saw stylistic differences in the artist’s paintings, whereas, according to the instructions of Grachenkov, different preservation. The look of Antonello's models is very expressive, it breaks through the alienation and psychological isolation of the image, it is slightly slanted in the direction opposite to the turn of the head, and therefore it seems tense. Antonello does not use the compositional tricks of the Netherlands, following the successfully found formula of the portrait and repeating it from time to time - even with one type of clothing: a simple jacket with a standing collar. Having greatly simplified the composition of the portrait, he achieved extraordinary clarity and concentration of visual means.

In addition to religious painting (see his Ecce homo), sculptural portraits ( Domenico Gagini , Francesco Laurana from the 1460s and 70s - shoulder busts) could influence him. Antonello conveys the portrayed tangibly three-dimensionally, but, unlike sculpture, not in a fixed face, but in a movable three-quarter turn, a counter post. Laurana's sculptures prompted the artist how expressive the stereoremetric generalized forms are.

The earliest surviving portrait of him is usually considered the " Portrait of the Unknown " from Cefalалу. It is veristic , as never before were portraits of the Quattrocento. And, unlike the Dutch portraits, the model of this picture is smiling. Antonello was the first artist of the XV century, who was able to discover the expressiveness of a smile ^[2] . But in his work, this is also part of the portrait formula, it is largely related to the archaic smile of Greek sculpture. In earlier portraits, this smile is more frank, then it is replaced by more subtle facial expressions - with open lips, as if at the moment of conversation.

In 1475, Antonello settled for two years in Venice, and his best portraits belong to this period. They retain illusionism similar to the Dutch, but they are saturated with heroic intonations (perceived by Mantegna). This period includes the “Portrait of a Man” from the Borghese Gallery, as well as the so-called “ Kondotier ” from the Louvre (1475), which is one of the most “Dutch” portraits of Antonella in its execution, and one of the most Italian in terms of interpretation of the image. The Dutch portrait painters did not meet such an energetic relief, plastic courage generalization of the face. The gaze of the “condottiere” is boring, intensely frozen. This Louvre portrait is clearly inspired by the heroic images of Mantegna, but there is no typification in it, more individual. (According to Graschenkov, the model of this portrait could be the famous condottier Roberto da Sanseverino ). In a portrait from the Borghese gallery, Antonello gives a bosom image in a larger close-up, takes the point of view a little from above, and from this all shapes and shapes take on greater mobility, and the outline of the cheek and nose change in a perspective reduction, the eyes are more beveled, and the relief is created by the shadows more clearly . New compositional techniques found in the portrait from Borghese are further developed. The portrait of an old man (Trivulcio de Milano?) Is a masterpiece of that time; the artist painted a man with a touch of ironic neglect on his face. In it, the image is energetically pushed to the foreground and fills all the free space, as if coming close to the viewer - this impression is achieved by a strong shift of the point of view down when the portrait bust is built in a perspective perspective “from the bottom up”. Thanks to this technique, the features of portraiture by Antonello are especially pointed. The pupils are in a sharp movement. The shoulders unfold in depth (the hanging ends of the cappuccino emphasize this), and the head turns from the depth, belatedly following a quick look.

Over time, his art becomes more classical and “captivating." His last portrait (from Berlin) belongs to this period. In it, the influence of the painting by Piero della Francesca is felt, but the lighting in the landscape and face is not coordinated (because of which it was even assumed that the background was originally dark, and then rewritten by landscape). This timid experiment, Antonello could not recreate the light-air unity of the head and landscape, which later appear in the Venetian portrait. The artist tried to bring landscape and parapet to harmony, giving them a single perspective reduction. But such a highly taken point of view turned out to be insufficiently linked to the portrait bust, depicted slightly "from the bottom up." In a similar way, the once found portrait formula of Antonello was prompted by the following factors - the attraction of advanced Venetian painters to "plenerism", as well as the fact that in Venice he had before his eyes ready-made samples of such a new solution. They looked back at Memling's new solutions, which gave a three-quarter turn against the backdrop of the landscape and no longer showed the framing of a window or loggia (previously restricting the surrounding space). According to written sources, it is known that several of Memling's paintings were in the houses of the Venetian patricians.

Unlike Memling, Antonello does not provide a developed landscape background. The landscape occupies a small piece of space - everything else is the sky with white clouds. Against its background, the dark silhouette of the head is clearly read. A light background, instead of the dark one familiar to the artist, allows for a softer and more transparent black-and-white sculpting of the face. The acuity of the personal characteristics of the model is weakening, there is no counter post, a calmer look and a motionless lip. Before us is calm, a new artistic ideal that will determine the leading direction in the development of the Venetian portrait. It is curious that in no portrait of Antonello, apparently depicting South Italian barons and Venetian patricians, there is no excessive luxury of clothing that would allow us to guess their situation. All these images are emphatically democratic. The artist demonstrates their human, personal uniqueness, and not class exclusivity ^[3] .

Antonello Messina is portrayed under the name Antonello di Terracina in the movie "Flemish Secrets" ("Secrets of the Flemings") 1974.

• Argan J.K. History of Italian art. - M .: Rainbow, 1990. - T. 1. - S. 299-303.
• Grashchenkov V.N. Antonello da Messina and his portraits. - M .: Art, 1981. - 146 p.
• Grashchenkov V.N. Portrait in Italian painting of the Early Renaissance. - M. , 1996.

• Antonello da Messina // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Messina in the Artcyclopedia
• Antonello da Messina in the History of Art
• Antonello da Messina - Biography and Works at WGA.HU
• Gallery of Artists of the World - Antonello da Messina Biographies