Calvary

In 1475 Antonello da Messina was near the end of a career that had quietly changed how Italians painted. A Sicilian, he had learned the oil technique the Flemish masters guarded in the north, and you can see that schooling here. Christ hangs crucified between two thieves tied to bare, lopped trees, and behind them a landscape is worked out plant by plant, bird by bird, in the patient northern way. Mary and John the Evangelist sit on the ground rather than stand. He signed and dated the panel, one of only about ten dated works he left. It is the single painting by his hand anywhere in Belgium, which is how it came to hang in Antwerp.