The second chapter evaluates the portraits as a body of work from the standpoint of form and technique, and incorporating the most recent technical analyses, demonstrates how Antonello achieved certain effects to arrive at what may indeed be considered a wholly independent work of art. The first chapter analyzes the recent literature on the portraits and demonstrates how they have been marginalized by scholarship despite being lauded as highly influential. Antonello is among the first Italian painters to claim the face as a locus for identification, and to answer the demand that painting capture both the physical and mental aspects of the sitter. This study reintegrates Antonello's portraits in the wider context of fifteenth-century Italy and argues that his portraiture is deeply rooted in the interests of the most prominent early Renaissance theories of painting.

While Antonello has been justly acknowledged as the first Italian painter to consider the portrait an independent work of art, his portraits are often characterized as imitations of Netherlandish models, and they are rarely discussed outside of the context of Venetian or Netherlandish portraiture. This dissertation presents the first full-length study of Antonello da Messina's portraits. This dissertation presents the first full-length study of Antonello da.

Elizabeth perkins 2015