Antonello da Messina (c.1430-1479)
Ritratto d’uomo (Portrait of a Man)
1476
Oil on panel, 37.4 x 29.5 cm
Museo Civico d’Arte Antica, Torino
The painted cartouche bears the date and the name of the artist.
The man who looks at us with firmness slightly tinged with irony is one of the most famous portraits in the history of art and bears the signature of Antonello da Messina, the most sensitive and original interpreter of the Flemish “ars nova” in Italy. The incredible realism of Nordic origin of the details – the features of the face acutely investigated from a psychological perspective, the material rendering of the cloth of the dress, up to the illusionistic detail of the tag with the signature and date fixed with sealing wax on the parapet – is balanced with the rigorous spatiality of the Italian Renaissance.
Coming from the Rinuccini Gallery in Florence, the portrait had been in the Trivulzio collection in Milan since around 1850. In 1935, the Civic Museum of Turin made efforts to purchase the precious collection, but the opposition of the Municipality of Milan ruined the negotiations; as compensation, the Museum thus obtained Antonello‘s masterpiece, together with the codex of the “Très Belles Heures de Notre-Dame de Jean de Berry”.
One of the highest peaks in the painter’s career, it is the penultimate of the series of portraits all scaled in the last decade of his life. The incredible realism of Flemish derivation of the details – the features of the face acutely investigated from a psychological point of view, the material rendering of the cloth of the dress, up to the illusionistic detail of the tag fixed with sealing wax on the parapet – is balanced with the rigorous spatiality of the Italian Renaissance.
The compositional scheme is the one most frequented by the artist, who, following the Nordic masters, adopts the three-quarter half-length cut, almost as if to cancel the distance between the character and the spectator. The figure stands out against the dark background, with the head turned to the right and the eyes pointed towards the spectator. The setting is close to other famous portraits, such as the one in the National Gallery in London or the Condottiero in the Louvre, but the closest analogies are with the Portrait of a Man in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. Both characters wear the red robe and the black cap with the long hood that falls on the shoulder, typical clothing of Venetian patricians.
The portrait may have been painted in the last months of Antonello‘s stay in Venice, between 1475 and 1476, or in Messina, where the artist returned in September 1476 and where he remained until his death. (MCAA)
Compare:
Antonello da Messina (c.1430-1479)
Ritratto d’uomo
c.1476
Galleria Borghese, Roma