Collection: Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin
Artist information: Antonello da Messina was an Italian painter of the Italian Renaissance. He was deeply influenced by Early Netherlandish and Venetian painting. He served as apprentice in Messina and in Palermo before studying under Niccolò Colantonio in Naples, one of the most lively centres of Renaissance art. In 1457, he received his first commission as an independent painter, a banner for the Confraternità di San Michele dei Gerbini in Reggio Calabria. The first work to be signed and dated by him, the Salvator Mundi, was created in 1470. Among his most famous paintings are the Annunciation and Saint Jerome in His Study, which he painted in 1474. Antonello's style is remarkable for its fusion of Italian simplicity with a Flemish concern for detail. He exercised an important influence on Italian painting due to his introduction and dissemination of Flemish painterly styles. His portraits are characterized by their modulation of light and shadow, as seen in 'Portrait of a Young Man' (ca. 1478).