From: Ingrid D. Rowland, ‘A Painter Not Human,’ The New York Review of Books, May 9, 2019
Antonello da Messina: Portrait of a Man, 12 x 10 3/8 inches, circa 1470
As the Sicilian novelist Leonardo Sciascia wrote of the rogue:
Who does the unknown man resemble? A mafioso from the countryside or one from the best neighborhoods, the member of parliament who sits on the right, or on the left, the peasant or the lawyer? He looks like the writer of these notes (it’s been said), and he certainly looks like Antonello. And just try to pin down the social status and the individual human nature of this personage. Impossible. Is he a noble or a plebeian? A notary or a farmer? A gentleman or a lout? A painter, a poet, an assassin? “He resembles.” There you have it.
--Leonardo Sciascia, L’ordine delle somiglianze (1967).
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