Portrait of a Young Man 1478

Antonello da Messina painted this portrait of a young man in oils, sometime in the mid-15th century. The artist lived and worked in a time of immense social change as Europe was moving away from the feudal system and starting to develop capitalist structures. The young man's gaze is direct, yet his expression is unreadable; his identity, like so many others in portraits of this time, is lost to history. We can see that the man is affluent, and his somber attire may reflect a conscious move away from the ostentatious displays of wealth that defined the earlier parts of the 1400s. There is an increasing emphasis on the individual, and the portrait became a way to capture one's likeness and project an image of self-possession. Notice the inscription at the bottom, it suggests qualities of prosperity, modesty, misfortune and prudence. The painting therefore asks us to meditate on this man’s virtues and flaws, and perhaps it encourages us to reflect on our own.