Antonello da Messina

Antonello da Messina brought Flemish oil technique and detail to Italian painting. His portraits show a head and shoulders against a dark background, with the sitter turning to look straight out at you. It was a new kind of portrait in Italy, and it changed how Venetians painted people.

He was born in Messina, Sicily, around 1430 and trained in Naples with Niccolò Colantonio, where he saw Netherlandish paintings. He worked mostly in southern Italy, but a stay in Venice in 1475 to 1476 made a lasting mark on painters there. Key works include Saint Jerome in His Study in the National Gallery, London, the Virgin Annunciate in Palermo and the San Cassiano Altarpiece in Vienna. He died in Messina in 1479.

In Christ at the Column, look at the tears and the tiny highlights in the eyes. That precision is what oil paint made possible.