Lot 141: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux

Antonio de Saliba (Messina c. 1466-1535) and Salvo d'Antonio (after 1461-before 1526) Saint Bernard of Clairvaux signed and dated 'OPVS ANTONELI MISSENIVS 1490' (lower left, on the crozier) oil on poplar panel 42 ½ x 15 in. (108 x 38 cm.)

108 x 38 cm.

G. Previtali, 'Alcune opere di Salvo d'Antonio da ritrovare', Prospettive, 33-6, April 1983-January 1984, pp. 124-34.

This panel was published by Giovanni Previtali, who recognized that it belonged to the same complex as the Saint Augustine 'signed' by Antonello da Messina which was published by B. Berenson, Italian Pictures of the Renaissance, Venetian School, London, 1957, l, p. 7 and pl. 277, as by Antonello himself ('Homeless'). When Giovanni Previtali wrote about that picture ('Da Antonello da Messina a Jacopo di Antonello. La data del "Cristo benedicente" della National Gallery da Londra', Prospettive, 20 January 1980, pp. 28 and 30, fig.2) he cited it as Antonello(?). In 1984, he recognized that the panel under discussion came from the same complex and advanced the persuasive attribution to Antonello da Saliba and Salvo d' Antonio (Giovan Salvo degli Antonii): the former was a pupil and relation of Antonello, who spent a considerable period in Venice but had returned to Sicily by 1497, while the latter, a nephew of Antonello da Messina, by whose work he was strongly influenced, is first recorded as a painter in 1493. The two panels are perhaps of the late 1490s. The central element of the complex, which was presumably commissioned for a Sicilian patron has not been identified: the Saint Augustine would have been placed to the left of this, the Saint Bernard on the right.