Antonello da Messina, ab

1414-1493. Italian portrait painter, famed for the introduction of oil-painting into Italy. His rare pictures, in the National Gallery, Louvre, Antwerp and Berlin Museums show him an earnest and capable artist. He was led to study oil painting in Flanders by seeing a picture of Jan Van Eyck at Naples. His epoch-making significance began in Venice, where he settled 1473. Here Giovanni and Gentile Bellini came under his influence, and developed from it the greatest school of oil painting known to history, the Venetian art of the 16th century.