Annunciation

In August 1474 a priest from the Sicilian hill town of Palazzolo Acreide signed a contract with Antonello da Messina for an Annunciation to hang in his local church. Antonello was the man who, more than anyone in Italy, had learned the Netherlandish trick of building a picture in thin, glowing layers of oil, and here he sets that soft northern light inside a coolly measured Italian room, two columns dividing the angel from the Virgin. Then the picture vanished from record for centuries. It surfaced again only in 1897, badly damaged, when a young museum official in Syracuse recognised the master's hand. What hangs in the Palazzo Bellomo today came through a restoration in 2006 that pulled the faded scene back toward what the priest first paid for.