Antonello da Messina, born in Messina, Sicily and apprenticed while quite young to the painter Colantonio del Riore in Naples, the nearest cosmopolitan center, had gained exposure here to Flemish artists because of the French and Spanish rule that obtains there.

A lost van Eyck panel of St. Jerome in His Study, known to have been in Naples in 1456, may be the inspiration for one of Antonello's earliest pictures on the same subject, painted around 1460.

Antonello's earliest signed work, Salvator Mundi, painted in 1465, displays a similarly obvious Netherlandish cast.

Antonello da Messina, schooled in the Flemish tradition (although, in all likelihood, he never leaves Italy) introduces oil painting to Venice when working there in 1475-76.

His works of this period begin to show a greater attention to the human figure, regarding both anatomy and expressivity, indicating the influence of Piero della Francesca and Giovanni Bellini.

His most famous pictures from this period include the Condottiero (Louvre), the San Cassiano Altarpiece and the St. Sebastian.

The San Cassiano Altarpiece is especially influential on Venetian painters, as it is one of the first of the large compositions in the sacra conversazione format, which is perfected by Giovanni Bellini (Antonello's surviving work in Vienna is only a fragment of a much larger original).

While in Venice he is offered, but does not accept, the opportunity to become the court portrait painter to the Duke of Milan.

His Crucifixion, painted in 1475, displays, like his earlier Salvator Mundi, the influence on Antonello of Netherlandish painting, this time in landscape.

Antonello’s influential “Madonna and Saints” altarpiece, usually known as the “San Cassiano Altarpiece,” is painted for the Venetian church of that name (only three fragments survive).

Antonello assembles the painting’s figures symmetrically around the elevated throne of the Madonna, all placed within a large-scale architectural setting.

His sensitivity to characteristically Venetian treatments of certain themes, such as the Venetian school's preoccupation with color, light, and atmosphere, can be seen in his St. Sebastian and his Pietá, both painted in 1475-76.

Antonello da Messina’s Portrait of a Man, possibly a self-portrait, executed in about 1475, exemplifies the penetrating insight into the personalities of his subjects for which Antonello’s portraits gain particular renown.

He dies in Messina at about forty-eight, sometime between February 14 and 25, 1479.