Installation dates: December 13, 2005 – March 5, 2006
Location: European Paintings Gallery 17, second floor
Press preview: Monday, December 12, 10:00 – noon
Three masterpieces by Sicily's greatest Renaissance painter, Antonello da Messina, will be on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from December 13, 2005, through March 5, 2006, in the exhibition Antonello da Messina: Sicily's Renaissance Master. This will be the first time any of these works will be on public view in the United States.
Philippe de Montebello, Director of the Metropolitan, noted: "This remarkable display will prove to be a revelation for our visitors. The centerpiece, The Virgin Annunciate from the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia in Palermo, is Antonello's most compelling painting – a work whose haunting beauty and enigmatic character can only be compared to Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa."
Daniele Bodini, Chairman of the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture of New York, added: "We are proud to continue fulfilling our mission of bringing to the American art-loving public the very best that Italy's rich tradition has to offer."
The exhibition was organized and made possible by the Cultural Commissioner for the Sicilian Region, Hon. Alessandro Pagano, and the Foundation for Italian Art and Culture, with the generous support of Bulgari and ACP Group.
Additional support has been provided by the Gail and Parker Gilbert Fund and the Italian Cultural Institute of New York.
Antonello da Messina (ca. 1430–1479) was one of the most groundbreaking and influential painters of the quattrocento. His formation took place in Naples during the rule of Alfonso of Aragon, in a brilliant artistic climate open to French and Netherlandish painting. Antonello absorbed these influences, so much so that many of his near contemporaries believed he was the first to introduce the use of oil painting – already current in the North – in Italy. His trip to Venice in 1475 was a landmark occasion, and his great altarpiece for the church of San Cassiano there (now in fragmentary form in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) redirected the art of Giovanni Bellini and other Venetian painters, while his portraits mark a new stage the evolution of that genre in Italy. No greater artist emerged from southern Italy in the 15th century.
This small, focused installation will open with a recently re-discovered, double-faced painting that may indeed be the artist's earliest, Madonna and Child with a Praying Franciscan Donor and Ecce Homo, now in the collection of the Museo Regionale di Messina. It provides a fascinating vision into the artist's training and earliest years. His innovative portraits, with their superb descriptive powers and glimpses into the psychology of the sitter, will be represented by the Portrait of a Man from Cefalù (Museo della Fondazione Mandralisca), as well as by the Metropolitan Museum's own Porait of a Young Man. These will be seen alongside the mysterious Annunciate Virgin, who is shown isolated against a neutral background and behind a simple reading desk, her hand outstretched in blessing. Few 15th-century paintings have a similar quality of pure geometry and repose. A handful of other works, including the Christ Crowned with Thorns, a drawing attributed to the artist in the Metropolitan Museum's Robert Lehman Collection, and a double-sided panel of Ecce Homo and St. Jerome from a private collection will complete this display, which will give the public a rewarding introduction to this challenging artist.
Antonello da Messina will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with essays by Keith Christiansen, Jayne Wrightsman Curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of European Paintings, and Gioacchino Barbera, Director, Museo Regionale di Messina.
The exhibition catalogue is made possible by the Drue E. Heinz Fund.
In conjunction with the display the Museum will present a "Weekend at the Met," February 18–19, featuring performances of traditional Sicilian puppet theater by the Argento Puppet Company. The company, which was founded in 1893, will stage a performance based on Maria Matteo Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato. The hour-long performance will be presented twice on each day, at 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. A lecture by Arthur Holmberg, Literary Director, American Repertory Theatre, and Associate Professor of Theatre Arts at Brandeis University, entitled "Knights in Shining Armor/Damsels in Distress: An Exploration of the Sicilian Puppet Theater" will be presented at 4:30 p.m. on Saturday and at 4:00 p.m. on Sunday.
The installation will be featured on the Museum's website (www.metmuseum.org).
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