The painter of our picture lived within those seventy-five years. He
was, probably, a certain Antonello of Messina--that same town in Sicily
recently wrecked by earthquakes. Of his life little is known. He seems
to have worked chiefly in Venice where there was a fine school of
painting during the Renaissance Period; his senior Giovanni Bellini,
one of the early great painters of Venice, some of whose pictures are
in the National Gallery, taught him much. It is also said that Antonello
went to the Netherlands and there learnt the method of laying paint
on panel invented by the Van Eycks. Modern students say he did not,
but that he picked up his way of painting in Italy. Certainly he and
other Venetians and Italians about this time improved their technical
methods as the Van Eycks had done, and this picture is an early example
of that more brilliant fashion of painting. There is here a Flemish
love of detail. The Italian painters had been more accustomed to
painting upon walls than the Flemings, for the latter had soon
discovered that a damp northern climate was not favourable to the
preservation of wall-paintings.
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