marco delogu

Antonello da Messina

A handful of images, all strictly frontal views, offers a personal vision of Antonello da Messina.
The Virgin Annunciate in Palazzo Abbatellis (1479), Portrait of a Man in Cefalù (c.1470), Dead Christ Supported by Three Angels (c.1478) and Christ at the Column (1476-78) make the transition from the decontextualisation of their display in the actual exhibition to the isolation of the photographic style, sometimes resulting in new juxtapositions of meaning, as in the case of the diptych composed of the Virgin Annunciate and Christ at the Column.
The photographs were taken on occasion of the retrospective held in the former stables of the Quirinal Palace and, like the statues of the Capitoline and Vatican Museums, the paintings by Caravaggio and the Dancing Satyr of Mazara del Vallo, are far more than mere reproductions of a work of art. Indeed, they are contemporary portraits, whose existence is nonetheless based on the distance of the representation.

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