An obviously wealthy citizen looking down on the viewer from above, but without condescension. A dark background from which the at least equally dark headgear stands out clearly, while casting a shadow on the upper garment. A light robe, sure, but the face of the person depicted is all light, in which every detail stands out clearly. The picture has a name, it is the so-called Trivulzio portrait, and the look of the sitter seems to abandon to the viewer all the questions that history can no longer answer him.
The question of the artist's appearance almost becomes a secondary matter. For with someone who excelled primarily in portraiture, one is always tempted to want to identify him in one of his works. Among more likely candidates, Trivulzio is just one among the usual suspects.
What we know for certain about Antonello da Messina is that he was born in Messina, where he learned his trade as a representative of the early Renaissance in Italy. Even if his years of apprenticeship and his sphere of activity are mainly limited to southern Italy, with Sicily's cities as the center, we also know about Milan and Venice and that he was in active contact with other artists of the time.
Here we find one of the uncertainties for which not only the Trivulzio painting stands: why did Antonello use oil painting? Were they and their perfection not a domain of the Flemish Jan van Eyck? One has come away again from the assumption that Antonello had penetrated far enough north on his travels to have brought the impressions he had gained home with him. It is more likely that he came into contact with the technique in Italy itself. There were enough objects of observation and artistic exchange. After all, he, recognized and respected, won his Italian colleagues for oil painting, so that it spread rapidly.
However, his activity was not limited to portrait painting. We come across a rich inventory of religious motifs in his work. His stay in Venice, for example, was due to the creation of an altarpiece for the church of San Cassiano. He positioned his saints both under the lingering impression of Piero della Francesca and in the style of the Dutch with a precise geometric sense of space in their respective surroundings. His "Jerome in a Case" should be considered a prime example of this.
Synthesis of portrait painting and religious motifs is certainly a double Annunziata. She greets lowered gaze with her fingers, while the missing space is shifted into the imagination of the viewer, who takes there the presumed position of the archangel.
The biographical data of Antonello also remain open. Only the year of his death in 1479 in Messina is considered sufficiently certain. From this one assumes around 1430 as year of birth. In this respect, the man in the reliably dated Trivulzio portrait could well be the painter at the age of 36. His questioning look will remain unanswered.
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.jpg "Saint Mary and Child with Saints Nicholas of Bari, Anastasia, Ursula, Dominicus and Helena by Antonello da Messina")
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.jpg "The Virgin and Child, ca 1465 by Antonello da Messina")
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.jpg "The Dead Christ Supported by an Angel by Antonello da Messina")
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