Antonello da Messina

Painting by a Bruges-based artist of an older generation, the sublime Jan van Eyck, was a hit in Naples, where it may have inspired the Sicilian-born Antonello da Messina to take up and master the Netherlandish medium of oil painting.

Other depictions of Saint Jerome by artists including Antonello da Messina and Domenico Ghirlandaio are similarly lavish in picturing the perfect study.

Brussels’s Center for Fine Arts, known as Bozar, brought out the paintings, prints and tapestries of the all-media monster Bernard van Orley; the Palazzo Reale in Milan revived Antonello da Messina, the Sicilian savant; and the National Gallery of Art in Washington went to bat for Verrocchio, the artistic paterfamilias of Medici Florence.

Oil paint was still relatively new in Italy, and Leonardo, who had seen what the great Flemish and Venetian artists — Jan van Eyck, Antonello da Messina and Giovanni Bellini — had done with it, loved the stuff.

But certainly her most stunning rendition comes from the hand of Antonello da Messina.