The Palazzo Reale in Milan inaugurated an exclusive exhibition on the Sicilian artist on 21 February 2019 Antonello da Messina, the best-known Sicilian painter of the fifteenth century and the first to have known how to balance light, atmosphere and attention to detail of Flemish painting with the monumentality and rational spatiality of the Italian school. "A historical exhibition whose realization was possible thanks to the collaboration of various institutions and which offers the public a fascinating story of an innovative artist", as the city councilor for cultural heritage Filippo Del Corno defined it.
The Milan exhibition proposes one review of Antonello da Messina's masterpieces, in an overview that embraces the various cultural influences, from the Mediterranean to Flanders, which the great Sicilian artist was able to learn and rework, creating an original and modern art.
Antonello da Messina was among the first to experiment with the use of oil painting, particularly suitable for the drafting of glazes with soft chromatic tones, and allowing a liveliness and realism that makes his portraits among the most beautiful that the history of European art has ever made, in which representative fidelity is associated with a unique capacity for psychological penetration of the individual.
Among the most important pieces of the collection there is the "Annunciata", the representation of the Virgin with dark and deep eyes and the face framed by the blue of the veil. Together with this painting there are 18 others of the 35 autograph masterpieces by Antonello da Messina. The exhibition curated by Giovanni Carlo Federico Villa will be open until next June 2nd.
The exhibition, as reported by ANSA, was born thanks to the agreement between the Sicily Region and the Municipality of Milan, with loans from all over the world. Among these, the figures of 'Sant'Agostino', 'San Girolamo' and 'San Gregorio Magno' from Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo, the triptych composed of 'Madonna and Child', 'San Giovanni Battista' and the 'San Benedetto' from the Uffizi. And again the 'Ecce Homo' of the Collegio degli Alberoni in Piacenza or the 'Portrait of a man' of the Pinacoteca Malaspina in Pavia, considered for a long time a self-portrait of the artist. There are also masterpieces from the collections of the main museums of the world: the National Gallery in London, the Philadelphia Museum of Art or the State Museum in Berlin. Also on display are the notebooks, sketches and notes of the art historian Giovan Battista Cavalcaselle, restored for the occasion and loaned by the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, which will act as a guide for visitors.
For the mayor of Milan Giuseppe Sala, Antonello da Messina also embodies the Milanese spirit: "He is a Renaissance man, fully European" with a style "born in Sicily but which developed a dialogue with Venetian and Lombard painting, then arriving to speak to artists from all over Europe" . This is also why Milan offers visitors an encounter with this artist, "to remind ourselves and Europe of who we are and what we know we are when our culture has the courage to open up, to compete and to deal with external stimuli" , concluded the mayor.
The exhibition is produced by Palazzo Reale and MondoMostre Skira.
