An artist of astonishing originality, Antonello combined a Netherlandish mastery of description with an Italian emphasis on formal presentation and expression. This painting may date as early as 1470. To increase its function as an aid to meditation, Christ is shown behind a parapet—a convention Antonello appropriated from portraiture. The device enhances the effect of Christ’s physical presence and suffering: "a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3).
In addition to an innovative series of portraits (see The Met 14.40.645), Antonello has left a no less inventive series of bust-length images of Christ as the Man of Sorrows. That in The Met has always been seen as a keystone. It comes from the collection of Don Giulio Alliata (or Agliata) of Palermo, where it is first described in 1653; the signature and date on the cartellino affixed to the parapet were then read as "Antonellus de Messina me fecit 1470". Subsequently the picture belonged to Count Duke Olivares. In 1858 the picture was seen and sketched in Naples by the great Italian connoisseur Giovanni Battista Cavacaselle. He recorded the much effaced inscription as "147. / Antonellus Messanus / me [pinxit]". This would make The Met's Christ the earliest dated image of this type, though Previtali (1980) and Sricchia Santoro (1986) believe a painting of the same subject in Genoa may be slightly earlier. The evolution of this novel type of devotional image has now come into clearer focus. Antonello experimented with it in at least two earlier paintings, both double-sided (in one the front side shows the Madonna and Child with a Franciscan; in the other Saint Jerome is shown in the wilderness). The first is an attributed work that possibly dates to the 1460s (Museo Nazionale, Messina). A figure of Christ, crowned with thorns with a rope around his neck, is seen through a frame of Gothic tracery. The other, in a private collection, New York, shows the figure of Christ chest-length, against a black background and behind a parapet, again crowned with thorns and with a rope around his neck—a reference to his being led off to Calvary. The format of The Met's portrait, in which the figure—crowned with thorns but without a rope around his neck—is shown bust-length, his body angled but looking out, full-face, may be viewed as the culmination of this rethinking of devotional images of Christ (Thiébaut 1993). This type of image is deeply indebted to Netherlandish painting, with which Antonello had been intimately acquainted during his stay in Naples. Jan van Eyck had painted a much copied Holy Face (see the example by Petrus Christus in The Met, in which the figure is shown behind a window opening: 60.71.1). The parapet was a common device used in Netherlandish portraits to create both a border and a link between the physical world of the viewer and the fictive world of the sitter. It was Antonello’s achievement to invest the image of Christ with a portrait-like proximity and tangible presence. And just as in his portraits he introduced a smile to animate the face, so in these devotional images he emphasized the expressive content: Christ as "a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). He also experimented with related images, in one of which Christ is shown behind a parapet extending his hand in blessing (National Gallery, London), and in the other of which Christ is bound to a column, looking upward (Musée du Louvre, Paris). The effect of these images was to place the viewer in a more immediate and affecting relationship with the object of his or her devotion by isolating the figure, portrait-like, from a narrative context.
Don Giulio Alliata (or Agliata), Palermo (in 1653); Don Gaspar de Haro y Guzmán, Marquis of Carpio, Count Duke of Olivares, Rome and Naples (until d. 1687; inv., 1687, no. 770); Ferdinando Maria Spinelli, principe di Tarsia, Naples (until d. 1780); duca di Gresso; conte Giacomo Lazzari, Naples (until 1843; posthumous inv., 1843, no. 61); Don Dionisio Lazzari, Naples (in about 1858); Gaetano Zir, Naples (by 1861–at least 1874; cat., 1874, no. 110); his widow, Signora Eleonora Torazzini, Naples (in about 1877); [Haro, Paris]; baron Arthur de Schickler, Paris and Martinvast (by 1908–at least 1916); his daughter, comtesse Hubert de Pourtalès, Martinvast (until 1920; sold to Duveen); [Duveen, Paris and London, 1920–27; sold to Wendland]; [Dr. Hans Wendland, Lugano, 1927]; [Kleinberger, Paris and New York, 1927]; Michael Friedsam, New York (1927–d. 1931)
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Vincenzo Auria. Notitia della vita ed opere d'Antonio Gagino scultore . . . Palermo, 1653, p. 17 [see Crowe and Cavalcaselle 1871], mentions an Ecce Homo in the collection of Giulio Agliata, Palermo, and reads the inscription as "Antonellus de Messina me fecit 1470".
Vincenzo Auria. Il Gagino redivivo. Palermo, 1698, p. 17 [see Zeri and Gardner 1973], describes the Ecce Homo in the collection of Don Giulio Alliata in Palermo and reads the inscription on the cartellino as "ANTONELLUS DE MESSINA ME FECIT 1470".
Memorie de' pittori messinesi degli esteri che in Messina fiorirono dal secolo XII sino al secolo XIX. Messina, 1821, p. 16, mentions the picture noted by Auria (1698).
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Aniello d' Aloisio. Notamento ed estimazione della quadreria del fu sig. D. Giacomo Lazzari. Naples, 1843, p. 6, no. 61, as "Da Messina Antonello. Ecce Homo, di palmo uno per uno e mezzo per alto, tavola".
Giambattista Ajello. Napoli e i luoghi celebri delle sue vicinanze. Naples, 1845, vol. 2, p. 333, in the Lazzari family house, among the collection assembled by Giacomo Lazzari, mentions "un bellissimo ritratto di giovine uomo, opera di valoroso pittore italiano quattrocentista, la quale molti assegnano allo Zingaro, altri ad Antonello da Messina".
Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Manuscript. [ca. 1858] [Biblioteca Marciana, Venice], as in the collection of Don Dionisio Lazzari, Naples; notes that it was earlier in the collections of the principe di Tarsia and the duca di Grasso; reads the inscription on the cartellino as "147. / Antonellus Messanus / me"; comments on Antonello's technique, noting that with the "fused, enameled color, you do not see traces of brush" and that the artist employs a "system of velature [a technique in which oil paint is superimposed over a preparation in tempera]—in full use, I believe, for the last time".
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Charles Lock Eastlake. Letter to Ralph Nicholson Wornum. September 20, 1861, having just seen the picture in Naples, calls the subject "repulsively treated and the head ill drawn" and wonders if the inscription was forged; does not doubt the picture is by Antonello.
Joseph Archer Crowe and Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Les anciens peintres flamands. Vol. 1, Brussels, 1862, p. 227, mention the Alliata picture among the lost works of Antonello.
Alfred Michiels. Histoire de la peinture flamande depuis ses débuts jusqu'en 1864. Vol. 2, 2nd ed. Paris, 1866, p. 398, as formerly at Palermo with the Alliata family, "presently" known as the princes of Villafranca.
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J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century. London, 1871, vol. 2, p. 85, identify this picture, then in the Zir collection, with the one described by Auria (1698) and read the inscription on the cartellino as "1.7.ntonellus messa . . ."; note that "few extant panels have been injured by time and restored more completely than this: but we can still see an early form of the master's art".
Ivan Lermolieff [Giovanni Morelli]. Kunstkritische Studien über italienische Malerei. Vol. 2, Die Galerien zu München und Dresden. Leipzig, 1891, pp. 245–46, dates it in the artist's early Flemish period, 1465–70.
Gioacchino di Marzo. La pittura in Palermo nel Rinascimento: storia e documenti. Palermo, 1899, p. 197, identifies our picture, then lost, with the one described by Auria [Ref. 1898].
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Gioacchino di Marzo. "Di Antonello d'Antonio da Messina: i primi documenti messinese." Archivio storico messinese 3 (1903), pp. 176–77 [see Ref. Zeri and Gardner 1973], quotes the description given by Auria in 1898.
Gaetano La Corte Cailler. "Antonello da Messina: studi e ricerchi con documenti inediti." Archivio storico messinese 4 (1903), pp. 362 ff. [see Ref. Zeri and Gardner 1973], discusses the origin of the picture.
Agostino D'Amico. "Antonello da Messina, le sue opere e l'invenzione della pittura ad olio." Archivio storico messinese 5 (1904), pp. 95, 125–26, mentions this painting as said to be in the Zir collection, Naples.
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Lionello Venturi. Le origini della pittura veneziana, 1300–1500. Venice, 1907, p. 224, refers to our picture as lost, and places it in Antonello's first period.
Lionello Venturi. "Studii Antonelliani." L'arte 11 (1908), pp. 443–44, ill. (the painting and Calvalcaselle's drawing after it [fig. 1]), identifies a picture then in the Schickler collection with the Ecce Homo from which Cavalcaselle made a sketch about 1858 when it was in the Lazzari collection; is only able to read "Antonellus messanen" on the cartellino, but considers this picture the earliest of Antonello's Ecce Homos.
Tancred Borenius, ed. A History of Painting in North Italy: Venice, Padua, Vicenza, Verona, Ferrara, Milan, Friuli, Brescia, from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century.. By J[oseph]. A[rcher]. Crowe and G[iovanni]. B[attista]. Cavalcaselle. 2nd ed. [1st
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