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.

Anna Swartwood House is Associate Professor of Art History in the School of Visual Art and Design at the University of South Carolina. She has published widely on cross-cultural encounters in early modern Europe.

Chapter One. The Documentary Thread. Chapter Two. Vasari's Life and its Afterlife Chapter Three. The Smile of the Unknown Mariner: The Sicilian Face of Antonello Chapter Four. Antonello, Collecting, and Display Chapter Five. Unfinished Journeys and the Saints Francis and Dominic