Giuseppe Consoli Guardo. For Antonello and Zanetto: new perspectives.

Giuseppe Consoli Guardo (1919-2010), archaeologist and art historian, in this last work retraces and clarifies the extraordinary cultural dimension that united Antonello da Messina, an artist unique in the European fifteenth century, with the Lombard fresco painter Zanetto Bugatto.

The author reconstructs Antonello's youthful years, still little known, conjecturing that his hand is evident in the fresco known as the "Triumph of Death" in Palermo, alongside Zanetto and the Burgundian artist Guillaume Spicre. Consoli Guardo sees this encounter as clarifying the enigmatic connection between Antonello and Zanetto. It projected the young painter from Messina into an itinerant formative period that brought direct insights into the most important places of art of his time, in both Italy and abroad, while enjoying the hospitality of monastic bodies, in the Quattrocento centres of fertile cultural exchanges.

In reviewing some well-known fifteenth-century works, Consoli Guardo reconsiders their attribution, proposing Antonello's authorship for many of them. In the case of some portraits already ascribed to the Sicilian painter, he then suggests the identification of the likenesses with famous figures in the history of the Italian Quattrocento, from Galeazzo Maria Sforza to Lorenzo de' Medici. In this volume published posthumously, Consoli Guardo opens up new perspectives for historical research, with a consideration of the contribution that Antonello da Messina made to art, not only in Italy but explicitly in Europe.

Giuseppe Consoli Guardo graduated in 1946 in Modern Literature with a thesis in Art History. In 1948 he started work as an archaeologist and then as an art historian specialising in the Quattrocento, while pursuing a scholarly-executive career in the cultural superintendencies of the Italian State, notably in Milan from 1959 to 1974. From 1968 to 1971, he directed the Museo Nazionale di Messina and then returned to the Soprintendenza ai Monumenti di Milano.