The Easel

Archives: The New York Review of Books

23rd April 2019

‘A Painter Not Human’

Coming from ‘provincial’ Sicily, Antonello struggled to get noticed. The modern view that he was the equal of Caravaggio or da Vinci is thus startling. Obsessed with depicting light and psychological detail, Antonello’s portraits are “utterly individual, unlike what any other artist was doing in his time or ours.” Of one portrait of Madonna reaching forward, “the greatest hand in Renaissance art”.