Antonello da Messina

It also reported that a culture ministry probe had found poor security at the museum.

In August, four paintings by the 15th century artist Antonello da Messina were taken from a museum in Sicily.

AFP also reported that Italian police had recovered paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth over $10 million stolen from a museum in March.

After the raid, the mayor of Cagnes-sur-Mer said the theft should serve as a warning about the protection of our museums, giving rise to calls for tighter security across France.

broke into the National Museum in Messina and stole some of the most important works of art that are owned by any museum in Sicily.

They're sort of parts of an altarpiece by Antonello da Messina, very important early Renaissance works, very important works for Sicily.

They broke in and, you know, nicked them all.

Well, they nicked a few panels, not all of them, and they left two panels outside as they ran

THE RENAISSANCE The Book of Art for Young People, by Agnes Ethel Conway and Sir Martin Conway.

Paintings discussed in this chapter are St. Jerome in His Study, by Antonello da Messina, and The Nativity, by Sandro Botticelli.

CHAPTER V.

THE RENAISSANCE Who is this old gentleman in our next picture reading so quietly and steadily? Does he not look absorbed in his book? Certainly the peacock, the bird, and the cat do not worry him or each other, and there is still another animal in the distance.

Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Volume III by Giorgio Vasari, translated by Gaston Du C. de Vere, 1955.

Life of Antonello da Messina.

Life of Antonello da Messina, Painter.

When I consider within my own mind the various qualities of the benefits and advantages that have been conferred on the art of painting by many masters who have followed the second manner, I cannot do otherwise than call them, by reason of their efforts, truly industrious and excellent, because they sought above all to bring painting to a better condition without thinking of discomfort, expense, or any particular interest of their own.

They continued, then, to employ no other method of coloring save that of distemper for panels and for canvases, which method had been introduced by Cimabue in the year 1250 when he was working with those Greeks, and had been afterwards followed by Giotto and by the others of whom we have spoken up to the present.

But certain Florentines who traded between Flanders and Naples sent to King Alfonso I of Naples a panel with many figures painted in oil by Johan, which became very dear to that king, both for the beauty of the figures and for the novel invention shown in the coloring.

And all the painters in that kingdom flocked together to see it, and it was consummately extolled by all.

Now there was one, Antonello da Messina, a person of good and lively intelligence, of great sagacity and skilled in his profession, who, having studied design for many years in Rome, had first retired to Palermo, where he had worked for many years, and finally to his native place, Messina, where he had confirmed by his works the good opinion that his countrymen had of his excellent ability in painting.