Niccolò Antonio Colantonio

[1] His paintings show the mingling of several cultures, as Alfonso V of Aragon had brought to Naples artists from Iberia, including the Valencian Jacomart, Burgundy, Provence, and Flanders.

His main surviving works are two large altarpieces, the first executed in oil for San Lorenzo Maggiore, probably commissioned about 1445 by Alfonso, which was dispersed in the Napoleonic period.

The Colantonio painting hangs in the Museo di Capodimonte in Naples, along with Saint Jerome in His Study, full of Netherlandish detail, which was also part of the altarpiece.

[3] Also attributed to Colantonio is a Deposition executed for San Domenico Maggiore, which draws on Rogier van der Weyden’s tapestries of scenes from the Passion (untraced), now lost but with some of the compositions known, which were then hanging in the Castel Nuovo in Naples.

[5] Outside Naples, he is known mainly for having been the teacher of the Sicilian Antonello da Messina, as Summonte records, probably some time between 1445 and 1455, who spread elements of his style, and northern oil painting technique, to other parts of Italy.