Antonello da Messina and the History of Art

This book argues that painter Antonello da Messina (c. 1430–1479) is a formative cross-cultural figure in the practice of art history itself. Featuring new interpretations of some of his best-known works, Anna Swartwood House shows how the uncertainties surrounding the painter have made him a uniquely pliable figure, easily inserted into different narratives of contact, cultural translation, and exchange. Using a wide range of materials including archival documents, biographies, civic histories, collectors’ notes, and popular literature, House traces the fortunes of an artist continually defined by place. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, Renaissance studies, early modern history, and historiography.