Christ at the Column

In the 1470s most Italian painters still worked in egg tempera, which dries fast and flat. Antonello, who had probably learned the newer oil technique in Naples where Netherlandish painters worked, could do things his contemporaries could not. This small panel, from his last years, shows Christ bound to the column before the scourging, the head turned up and the mouth open. Look closely and you find two tears on the cheek and a single bead of blood that has gathered below the hairline and started to run, details only slow-drying oil could hold. He died in Messina in 1479, a year or two after finishing it.