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annotationSouthern French ANTONELLO DA MESSINA (1450?-1493?) THE DEPOSITION FROM THE CROSS

THIS beautiful primitive has excited much interest among critics by reason of its exhibiting both Flemish and Italian qualities at a period in the strongly opposed. It first became known to the modern art world in 1902, when it was exhibited at Bruges, and catalogued as the work of Antonello da Messina, who lived in the latter half of the fifteenth century, and is supposed to have introduced painting in oil into Italy. It is believed by some critics to be the historic picture described by Boschini in La Ricche Minore della Pittura. Mr. Roger E. Fry has made it the subject of a critical essay in the Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, written in December, 1907, while the painting was in that museum. Discussing the picture in 1902, Mr. Fry was impressed by the mixture of Flemish and Italian influences, and "came tentatively to the conclusion hat it was by an Italian artist under the influence of Justus, of Ghent, who was settled in Urbino. Since the picture came to America," he adds, "a more prolonged and minute examination of it has led him to the conclusion that, after all, the original attribution to Antonello da Messina is correct."

Another critic comments on the Flemish and Italian influences which "modulate in subtle succession over the canvas," and he supports Mr. Fry's attribution to Antonello. "The canvas," he adds, "breathes the spirit of faith in which it was conceived and executed; it also is painfully veracious in the presentation of lacerated bodies and souls."

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