In 1442 Alfonso V of Argon became ruler of Naples, bringing with him a collection of Flemish paintings and setting up a Humanist Academy.
The painter Antonella DA Messina seems to have had access to the King's collection, which may have included the works of Jan van Yuck.
He seems to have been exposed to Flemish painting at a date earlier than the Florentine, to have quickly seen the potential of oils as a medium and then painted in nothing else.
He carried the technique north to Venice with him, where it was soon adopted by Giovanni Bellini’s and became the favored medium of the maritime republic where the art of fresco had never been a great success.
Antonella DA Messina painted mostly small meticulous portraits in glowing colors. But one of his most famous works also demonstrates his superior ability at handling linear perspective and light.
This is the small painting of St. Jerome in His Study, in which the composition is framed by a late Gothic arch, through which is viewed an internal, domestic on one side and minister on the other, in the centre of which the saint sits in a wooden corral surrounded by his possessions while his lion prowls in the shadows on the covered floor.
The way that the light streams in through every door and window casting both natural light and reflected light across the architecture and all the objects would have excited Piero Della Francesca.
His work influenced both Gentile Bellini’s, who did a series of paintings of Miracles of Venice for the Scuola di Santa Croce, and his more famous brother, Giovanni, one of the most significant painters of the High Renaissance in Northern
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