Christina McGrath

ARTH 424 Age of Van Eyck

Final Paper Proposal: Antonello da Messina and the Diffusion of Northern Renaissance

Art in Italy

If one were to look at the oeuvre of Antonello da Messina without knowing

his name or national origins, one might be inclined to assign his works to a Northern

Renaissance master in the tradition of Jan Van Eyck. There is a certain quality to his

paintings, however, that renders a Netherlandish attribution not entirely convincing

either there is a fascinating fusion of Italian and Northern European pictorial

elements in his works. He was credited with bringing the technique of oil painting

to Venice, thus directly impacting the Bellini dynasty (this has been largely

discredited in recent years), though the very myth of such an impact calls to mind

the long-held belief that Van Eyck had invented that very technique.

Through a stylistic and iconographic analysis of a selection of Antonello da

Messinas paintings, I propose to analyze the diffusion of Netherlandish art in Italy

and its impact on the development of the Italian Renaissance tradition. I will aim to

incorporate other artists of the period into this discussion, obviously including Jan

Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden (who traveled to Italy and is said to have

instructed some of the peninsulas artists in the Netherlandish style), as well as

some Italian artists who exhibited this influence, such as Niccol Antonio Colantonio

and, more famously, Fra Filippo Lippi. This interdisciplinary discussion of the

historical milieu in which the circulation of Netherlandish style occurred, stylistic

analysis, and criticism on such trends will, I hope, yield a multifaceted term paper
that highlights the extent to which artistic development during the Renaissance

transcended national borders.

 Preliminary Bibliography

Borchert, Till, and Julien Chapuis. 2011. Van Eyck to Du rer: the influence of early
Netherlandish painting on European art, 1430-1530. London: Thames & Hudson.

Aikema, Bernard, Beverly Louise Brown, and Giovanna Nepi Scire . 1999. Il
Rinascimento a Venezia: e la pittura del Nord ai tempi di Bellini, Du rer, Tiziano.
[Milano]: Bompiani.

Barbera, Gioacchino, and Antonello. 1998. Antonello da Messina. Milano: Electa.

Borchert, Till, and Andreas Beyer. 2002. Age of Van Eyck: the Mediterranean world
and early Netherlandish painting, 1430-1530. New York, N.Y.: Thames & Hudson.

Nash, Susie. 2008. Northern Renaissance art. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ruda, Jeffrey. 1982. Filippo Lippi studies: naturalism, style, and iconography in early
Renaissance art. New York: Garland Pub.