They were the breakers of stone and hewers of wood who prepared the way for the greater artists of the end of the century, but in the process of learning, many of them painted very lovely things.
The painter of our picture lived within those seventy-five years.

He was, probably, a certain Antonello of Messina--that same town in Sicily recently wrecked by earthquakes.

Of his life little is known.

He seems to have worked chiefly in Venice where there was a fine school of painting during the Renaissance Period; his senior Giovanni Bellini, one of the early great painters of Venice, some of whose pictures are in the National Gallery, taught him much.

It is also said that Antonello went to the Netherlands and there learnt the method of laying paint on panel invented by the Van Eycks.