Circa 1430-1431
He is born in Messina, the son of Giovanni de Antonio, a mazonus, or stonecutter, and Garita (probably Margherita). Named Antonio, he is better known as Antonello da Messina. His date of birth can be deduced, though not to the day, from Vasari’s affirmation (1550, 1568) that Antonello died at 49, and from the fact that his death date, February 1479, is documented.
Circa 1450
Antonello’s apprenticeship with Colantino, the best painter in Naples, should date to around this time.
1457
Already a successful painter, Antonello executes a processional banner for the Confraternity of San Michele dei Gerbini in Reggio Calabria, similar to the one he had already done for the Confraternity of San Michele in Messina. Both works are now lost. He is already married, and it is likely that his son, Jacobello, who was to take charge of his workshop when he died, has already been born. Antonello has had an apprentice for a year, Paolo di Ciacio from Calabria, who does not respect the terms of his contract and is sentenced to reimbursing the artist.
1460
His father Giovanni hires a brig to bring back Antonello and his family, their servants and goods and chattels from Amantea in Calabria. From this we may presume that he returned from working in Calabria for a period, or from further afield. It has been suggested that the artist was in Rome in 1459, though there is no documentation to confirm this, where he met Piero della Francesca.
1461
His younger brother Giordano, with their father Giovanni as witness, enters into a three-year contract with Antonello to learn painting. As is the custom, he undertakes not to marry during that period. Antonello paints a Madonna and Child, now lost, for the Messina aristocrat Giovanni Mirulla.
1462
He is commissioned to paint a banner, now lost, for the Sant’Elia Confraternity of Disciplinarians, similar to the ones already executed for the Confraternities of Santa Maria della Carità and of San Michele, both lost.
1463
He paints an altarpiece with scenes from the life of Saint Nicholas for the Confraternity of San Nicolò della Montagna in Messina. Seen by Cavalcaselle in 1871, it was destroyed in the 1908 earthquake.
1464
Antonello buys a house in the Contrada dei Sicopanti in Messina, a property he was to keep for the rest of his life.
1465
He and his neighbour Giovanni di Bonfiglio reach a compromise over
the division of the building standing between their houses, which had
been granted to them both by the Diocesan Curia.
According to some scholars, this is the date on the cartellino of the
Blessing Christ, from London, while we would opt for 1475. From 1465
on there is a lacuna in the documentation until 1472, but this does
not necessarily mean that Antonello was away from Messina, or travelling
in Italy or elsewhere in Europe to complete his education. The small
panel painted on both sides held by the Galleria Regionale in Messina
should date to around that year.
1470
This date was once decipherable on the Ecce Homo held by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The panel painted on both sides in a private collection in New York, the Spinola Ecce Homo in Genoa, the Sibiu Crucifixion, the London Salting Madonna and the portraits from Pavia and Cefalù, were all necessarily executed before the first Ecce Homo.
1472
Antonello executes a banner, now lost, for the Confraternity of the Holy Ghost in Noto; he guarantees it for six years, and undertakes to restore it free of charge should it deteriorate. Reading between the lines, we realize that this was his first mature use of oils for a public work. The contract is guaranteed by two engravers, Antonio and Antonio Luca de Resaliba, who were related to Antonello. He also accepts a commission for a large altarpiece, now lost, for the Church of San Giacomo in Caltagirone, which can be deduced from a document dated the following year.
1473
Antonello executes the signed and dated polyptych, probably commissioned by Sister Frabia Cirino, for the Convent of Santa Maria Outside the Walls in Messina. Still extant, the work is now held by the Museo Regionale. About a month previously, he had executed a banner for the Confraternity of the Trinity in Randazzo. He receives the second instalment of the payments for the Caltagirone and Messina polyptyches. He establishes the dowry for his daughter Caterinella, who is about to marry. He paints various standards, which have not come down to us, for a certain Pietro “milite” in Messina. The Crucifixion held by the National Gallery in London may have been dated 1473.
1474
The Portrait of a Young Gentleman, now in the Johnson Collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art once bore this date, now cut off. The same date appeared on the Ecce Homo in the Ostrowsky Collection, which disappeared during the Second World War. In August, Antonello undertakes to paint for Giuliano Maniuni the Annunciation for Palazzolo Acreide, now in the Museo di Palazzo Bellomo in Syracuse, by the end of November. In mid-September, the painter and his wife make over all their possessions to their younger son Giordano, reserving for themselves the right of usufruct. This was probably done to guarantee their future, should Antonello travel to the mainland. In fact, the Berlin Portrait of a Young Man in Venetian dress dates to 1474, giving every indication that the artist went to Venice. However, it must be pointed out that as the year began ab incharnatione domini (that is on 25 March), the 1474 date actually includes the first three months of what would now be considered 1475
1475
In August, Antonello begins working on the San Cassiano Altarpiece, fragments of which are held by the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. It is commissioned by the aristocrat Pietro Bon in Venice, as documented in a letter written by Bon to Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan in 1476. The two portraits of Alvise Pasqualino and Michele Vianello, now lost, which were seen by Marcantonio Michiel in Antonio Pasqualino’s house in Venice in 1532, were both dated 1475. As are the so-called Condottiere in the Louvre, the Ecce Homo in the Galleria Alberoni in Piacenza, and the Antwerp Crucifixion. We are of the opinion that the date of the Blessing Christ, from London, should also be read as 1475. The uncertainty over the dating of this work arises from the fact that the date alluded to in poor Latin and the one determined by other evidence do not coincide, giving us two alternatives: 1460 or 1475.
1476
Galeazzo Maria Sforza, Duke of Milan, has to replace his court painter Zanetto Bugatto, who had recently died, and does his utmost to obtain Antonello. The latter soon goes to Milan, bearing a letter from Pietro Bon asking that the painter first be allowed to finish the San Cassiano Altarpiece, which requires only 20 more working days to complete. The altarpiece is highly acclaimed as one of the Italian marvels already completed and in place, by Matteo Colacio. The Trivulzio Portrait in the Museo Civico in Turin also bears the date 1476. Towards the end of the year Antonello returns to Messina, where he pays the second instalment of his daughter Caterinella’s dowry. He probably left the workshop he started in Venice in the hands of an assistant capable of bringing in commissions there, who would pass them on to him in Messina.
1477
This year seems to signal the return of a more accentuated Flemish-style pathos in the works of Antonello, visible in masterpieces such as Christ at the Column from the Louvre and the Pietà from the Prado. In collaboration with his brother-in-law Giovanni de Saliba, Antonello undertakes to paint a processional banner for the Mother Church of the Santissima Annunciata in Ficarra, Sicily. The assessors of Catania effect a payment for unspecified works done in the Cathedral.
1478
The Berlin Portrait of a Young Man bears this date. In the summer, the newly-founded Confraternity of San Rocco in Venice commissions from Antonello a triptych for their altar in the Church of San Giuliano. The painter only has time to execute the Saint Sebastian, now in Dresden; the Saint Christopher, now lost, bore the signature of his son Jacobello – or “Pino da Messina”. In November, Antonello painted a red silk flag for Ruggero di Luca da Randazzo.
1479
Gravely ill, he makes his will on 14 February. By 25 February he is dead, and his son Jacobello completes the flag for Ruggero di Luca da Randazzo. In March, Jacobello delivers to the Church of Santa Maria della Carità in Catania some works that his father had not been able to complete, and takes on an apprentice. In June, he comes to an agreement with his mother, who has since remarried, about dividing the possessions left by his father, and in September he undertakes to execute a painting for Father Nicolò Franzi.
1480
Jacobello dates the Madonna and Child in the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, signing himself “filius non humani pictoris”. His cousin Antonello de Saliba enters his workshop as an apprentice. In March, he undertakes to finish the processional banner for the San Michele Confraternity of Disciplinarians in Catania, left unfinished by Antonello. There is no reference to him in any Messina documents after this date. In all likelihood, he moved to Venice, to run the workshop Antonello opened there many years previously.
1488
According to the will of his grandmother Garita, read by La Corte Cailler in 1903, but never found again, Jacobello must already have died, since he had been away a long time, and no one had ever had news of him.
1497
This is the date on the Madonna and Child by Antonello de Saliba, in
Castello Ursino, Catania. A document shows that his brother Pietro de
Saliba was also in Catania that year. The fact that they were both in
the city at the same time (Pietro’s presence is also documented
in Liguria, three years later) leads us to think that the workshop run
by Antonello and taken over by his son in Venice, finally closed its
doors around 1496.
