TWO SALVATOR MUNDIS - LEONARDO and ANTONELLO da MESSINA

TWO SALVATOR MUNDIs- LEONARDO's AND ANTONELLO da MESSINA's

Because of all the interest in Leonardo da Vinci's SALVATOR MUNDI painting of 1500 that sold at Christie's in 2017 for $450 million dollars, new scrutiny should now be given to an even earlier painting of a similar subject, CHRIST BLESSING, by Antonello da Messina, made in 1465. The Antonello painting is so close in composition to the Leonardo that it should be looked upon as the
model for it:



Leonardo, Salvator Mundi, 1500                 Antonello da Messina, Dio Benedicente
          Saviour of the World                          Christ Blessing, 1465

In both paintings the male half-figure is shown lightly bearded, with long curly hair, and he has his right hand raised in a blessing gesture, with two fingers (index and middle) lifted up above the thumb and other fingers.
 




Antonello, left
Leonardo, right







In both paintings Christ faces the viewer straight on with lips closed and with thoughtful expression.

Antonello left

                                                                                                                                                                             Leonardo, right                                                                           

The direct frontal placement of the head sets up a personal connection and communication with the viewer. The sweetness of expression on both faces gives the spectator the sense that this figure is a Christ who forgives, not the angry, judgmental God who condemns souls to hell. In both we can tangibly feel the importance of the right hand that moves out into the space of the spectator to address the world. We don't see the wounds on Christ's hands from the Crucifixion, but since the figure is presented as an icon rather than in a narrative, we assume the portrait is meant to represent Christ after the Resurrection. In both paintings the left hand rests on a wooden beam, symbolic of the wooden cross on which Jesus was crucified and perhaps a reference to his grave.

 

The right hand of each is lifted above the wood base to remind us of the Resurrection, the event when he ROSE from the dead, which happened three days after his death, and the fingers on the right hand in each are slightly crossed for the blessing to remind us of the Crucifixion. In the Leonardo's Salvator Mundi the embroidery on his blue clerical gown also forms a cross as it reaches over the body; within the bands of embroidery are many more crosses.

The cross references (in a different meaning) in Antonello da Messina's are in the placement of the ring finger in relation to the thumb of the right hand:

In both paintings one hand is in this world and the other in heaven. In Antonello's the left hand touches the wood, grounding it in the world of human suffering, as Christ experienced it on the cross. The blessing hand is lifted above that world, giving us a sense that this Christ is beyond the suffering now and is at peace with his human nature. In Leonardo's the left hand holds the orb of the earth

which looks at once like an object of imperial earthly power, such as the orb and cross made for the Holy Roman Emperor on the left, and also like a round globe of sky with stars and land mass below made by his hand seen through the glass. Leonardo didn't form a cross with ring finger and thumb in his painting because he had already formed it with the embroidery on the pivial. But Leonardo makes
the eyes of the figure odd, as if one is looking at this world and one at the next, implying that he is a deity who has lived in both.

Both artists are superb painters of foreshortening, which means rendering objects in perspective so that we see them appearing in the painting as they would in real space. The fingers are not stretched out here because we see them from a frontal angle, and from that direction we do not see their full extension. Leonardo defers to his model by exactly reversing the position, turning upside down, the foreshortened left-hand fingers in Antonello's Salvator.
                                                             

Sometime in 1465, ANTONELLO DA MESSINA painted this figure of Christ Blessing that could also be regarded as a painting of the SAVIOUR of the WORLD (Salvator Mundi.) He signed the work, ANTONELLUS MESSANEUS, Antonello from Messina, ME PINXIT, painted me. He also dated the painting but much scholarly discussion has ensued because of the curious way in which he has written down the date. The painting is now in the National Gallery in London and is thought to be the earliest signed and dated painting by this artist.

Christ is presented with his right hand lifted in benediction. He is portrayed as the saviour of the world blessing his followers and as the Christ Risen addressing his disciples. The clear light falls on the figure from the left and illuminates the knuckles of the fingers as well as dirt under the fingernails.

 If you look closely just to the right of his right index finger you can see another finger reaching into his neck. The artist began with the fingers closer to the chin and then revised his composition, but in later years, the overpaint wore away, and the "pentimento," or "error" has revealed his original intention. He may have changed the right hand to coincide with the left that is resting on the wood. But he may also have decided he wanted to form a cross with the thumb and ring finger in order to remind viewers of Christ's death and Resurrection. Though the positioning of the fingers and thumb are somewhat awkward, he realized that that positioning worked better to advance the right hand further forward in the pictorial space and to cross the middle finger with the thumb.

Both painters are such a superb painters of space that the viewer can find seven layers of space, counting the viewer's own, in their works. In both paintings the space moves further back as the eye moves up the panel. In Antonello's the layers are:

1)the space in front of the folded piece of paper
2)the paper itself
3)the wood to which the paper is attached
4)space of the hands in front of Christ
5)space of his robes
6)space of his neck and head
7)and space implied by his hair that sweeps behind his head.
SEVEN AREAS OF PICTORIAL SPACE
In the Leonardo work:

1) the wooden parapet
2) the fingers of the left hand
3) the orb
4) the fingers of the right hand
5) the cloth robes
6) the body (chest, neck, and face)
7) the hair behind the face
SEVEN AREAS OF PICTORIAL SPACE.
        One of the most interesting parts of the Antonello painting is the fictive piece of paper painted below the fingers and casting a shadow onto the wood. The paper seems to have been unfolded to give us a note to remember, but when we read the words in Latin, we realize it is the artist giving us the date and signature for his painting. The note becomes the acknowledgement of the authorship of the panel itself, almost a label for the painting without the Christian subject on it. What are the words that the artist chooses to paint in script writing on the unfolded paper whose corners tip and catch the light?
      FIRST LINE;        Millesimo quatricentessimo seystage              1460
      SECOND LINE:  
simo quinto viije  Indi Antonellus             5th  viije (?) Indi Antonello da Messina
      THIRD LINE:       messaneus me pinxit.                               painted me.
The National Gallery is not clear about the date, saying the painting appears to be dated 1465.
The Latin translation has been given as:  1465 on the 8th  on the day  Antonellus of Messina painted me. Much discussion has been raised about this date by scholars because they don't believe he could have painted such a complex series of spaces as early as 1465; they think the painting might have been begun in 1465 but finished in 1475 and that the viiie is really xiiie and implies a date after which the fingers were "corrected" and he decided to sign the work as completed. Some scholars say that Indi refers to the fingers (indicione) but how the viiie or xiiie fits in is unclear. What if Indi refers to "on the day" and the viiie implies the 8th day, 1460, 8th day of the fifth (quinto)  month, May 8th? A strange way to date it? To specify the exact day of completion?
      My own reading of this date is:
      1465, anni in domini, Antonellus Messaneus me pinxit
      In the 1465th of the Years of our Lord, Antonello da Messina painted me.
This reading also makes sense in light of the subject of the painting, and in light of abrasion of the surface that might have altered the word "anni."

         While a good case can be made for the "cartellino" originating as a signature with Antonello, a better case can be made for it only being an addition to Antonello's oeuvre after he had seen similar "cartellini" painted by Giovanni Bellini in Venice. 
          Two further notes about Leonardo's SALVATOR MUNDI:

1) His painting has a "pentimento" too - The embroidery that crosses over his chest as part of the pivial (clerical gown) has an error. The painter starts to paint the upper right part of the X as sliding over the upper left and then changes his mind and continues the embroidery under the blue robe

to the left of the white pearl in the center.
2) Leonardo never signs or dates his works because he makes so few of them and he doesn't want the name and date to distract from the figure, as they do for the Antonello image. But in this case he doesn't date it because it is painted in the year of the Jubilee, 1500, when the celebration taking place across Europe for Christian belief having lasted 1500 years would be clear to all his viewers. The subject is chosen for that reason, too, a painting of Christ's face and hands that shows his survival for the European world.
         Which leaves the question: when and where could Leonardo have seen Antonello's painting? Antonello is documented in Venice in 1475; four years later he dies back in Sicily, in Messina. Antonello's painting could have been left in Venice when he returned to Messina. Leonardo goes to Venice in 1499, twenty years after Antonello has died, thirty-four years after Antonello painted his Salvator Blessing. Leonardo is in Venice in 1500, the probable year in which he paints the Salvator Mundi. Leonardo creates his own version of the Saviour, but in the choices he makes for the seven layers of space, the hand gestures, beard, hair, the frontal half-body of Jesus, his imitation is the best form of homage to the earlier artist, whom he must have admired for his radical portrait of the SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD, SALVATOR MUNDI.

 

Both images have the power to astonish, the power to transfix, and the power to move the viewer.

We are certainly blessed in being able to see them.