249 



ANTONELLO DA MESSINA. 



ANTONINUS PIUS. 



230 



picions were set afloat of Antommarchi's veracity ; it was affirmed that 

 he had unlawfully assumed the title of professor, and that nobody 

 had been able to find two works that he said he had published the 

 one a treatise on the cholera, the other concerning physiology. The 

 advocates of the new science of phrenology, in their spiteful ardour, 

 went so far as to throw a suspicion upon the identity of the cast con- 

 sidered with regard to the material. ' Your cast,' they said to him, 

 ' is of a fine plaster; it ia white and pure, such as is only to be seen at 

 Lucca, where beautiful statuettes are formed of it ; you could not have 

 found any such at St. Helena.' Weaned with all these vexations, 

 Antommarchi about 1836 took the desperate step of emigrating, in 

 order to practise homceopathicaUy at New Orleans, and afterwards at 

 the Havannah." He died at San Antonio, in Cuba, about 1844. 



ANTONELLO DA SIESSI'NA, a celebrated Italian painter, dis- 

 tinguished as the first Italian who painted ' in oils,' as it is termed. 

 Neither hia name nor any date connected with events of his life are 

 exactly known. He was born at Messina about the year 1414, and wa3 

 instructed in painting by his father, Salvatore d" Antonio ; he then 

 studied in Rome, and returned to Messina an accomplished painter for 

 his time, and acquired considerable reputation by some works which 

 he executed at Messina and at Palermo. In about the year 1442 he 

 had occasion to visit Naples, where, in the possession of the king, 

 Alfonso I., he saw a picture executed in a manner and with materials 

 quite new to him : this was a picture of the Annunciation by Giovanni 

 da Bruggia, as Vasari names John Van Eyck. Antonello no sooner 

 saw this picture than he was possessed with an invincible desire to 

 learn by what means it was painted ; and having learnt the name and 

 place of residence of the painter, he immediately set out for Flanders, 

 where, by means of presents of Italian drawings and other works of 

 the kind, he was not long in obtaining Van Eyck's secret. Antonello 

 seems to have remained with Van Eyck until his death in 1445, when 

 Antonello returnee' to Sicily for a few years ; but before 1450 he was 

 in Venice, by which time he had communicated the new method to 

 Domenico Veneziano, who was murdered in Florence in 1464 by 

 Andrea del Castagno, after he had obtained the secret of the new 

 method from him. From Venice Antouello repaired to Milan, where 

 he probably dwelt some years, and about the year 1470 he returned to 

 and established himself at Venice. In Venice he lived upwards of 

 twenty years in the enjoyment of the reputation of one of the most 

 distinguished painters of his age. He died, aged 79, probably in 1493, 

 just as he was about to execute some works for the palace of the 

 siguory of Venice. 



Antonello appears to have made no secret of his new method of 

 painting after his second visit to Venice, for in 1573 Bartoloineo 

 Vivariui painted a picture in the new manner for the church of San 

 Giovanni and San Paolo, and Antonello himself marked his pictures 

 ' 00 piuxit' There is at least one so marked in the possession of a 

 gentleman at Utrecht : it represents Christ between the two thieves, 

 and ' Antonellus Messaneus me 06 pinxit, 1475,' is inscribed upon it; 

 it is a small picture painted upon a panel of wild chestnut. The ' 00' 

 evidently signify 'oleo,' or in oil; a word however calculated to mis- 

 lead, as the method of painting simply in oil was very old, and that 

 of Van Eyck was not merely painting in oil; it was, according to 

 Vasari, painting in varnish. Vasari says that Van Eyck, by boiling 

 linseed, poppy, and nut-oils, with other mixtures, obtained that varnish 

 which he in common with every other painter in the world had long 

 desired. From this sentence it is evident that ' painting in oil ' is 

 strictly a misnomer, and it was adopted only as sufficiently descriptive 

 in contradistinction to the then prevailing method of water-colour, or 

 ' a tempera ' painting. 



Antonello's works were distinguished for tone, for brilliancy ol 

 colour, and for the excellence of their impasto, but those which remain 

 are much darkened. In design they are similar to the works of the 

 Bellini. Antonello's life was long, and he was industrious; the extreme 

 scarceness therefore of his works cannot be otherwise accounted for 

 than by supposing them to be attributed to other masters, or vaguely 

 designated as of the school of Van Ejck a very frequent designation 

 in the continental galleries. 



ANTO'MA MAJOR, the elder daughter of Autonius the triumvir, 

 by Octavia, tbe half-sister of Augustus, born B.C. 39. She married L 

 Domitius, the son of Cn. Domitius, who supported the interests o: 

 Antony in the disputes with Augustus, until a short period before the 

 battle of Actium, and the grandson of L. Domitius, who fell in the 

 flight from Pharsalia. Among the descendants of Antonia were some 

 of the most illustrious personages in Rome. One of her daughters 

 Domitia Lepida, was the mother of MessaUna, afterwards married to 

 the Emperor Claudius ; and her son, Cn. Domitius, marrying Agrip 

 pina, became the father of the Emperor Nero. We have called this 

 Antonia the elder in agreement with Suetonius and Plutarch. Tacitus 

 on the contrary, speaks of her as the younger daughter. (' Ann.,' iv 

 44; xii. 64.) 



ANTO'NIA MINOR, the sister of the preceding, born B.C. 38 or 3 

 She married Druaus Nero, the brother of the Emperor Tiberius, bj 

 whom she became the mother, 1, of the celebrated Germanicus; 2, o 

 Livia, or Livilla, who was first married to Caius Caesar, the grandson 

 of Augu-tua, and after his death to her cousin Drusus, the son of Tibe- 

 rius ; and, 3, of the Emperor Claudius. Caligula, being the son of 

 Germanicus, was her grandson. 



Antouia was not fortunate in her domestic relations : she lost her 

 msband B.C. 9, before she was thirty years of age, by a fall from his 

 lorse. Early in the reign of Tiberius (A.D. 19) she saw the widowed 

 Agrippina return from the east with the ashes of her son Germauicua. 

 ~n 23 her daughter Livia, corrupted by Sejanus, assisted in the murder 

 if her own husband Drusus ; but her guilt remained unknown to the 

 vorld until eight years after, when Antonia herself became indirectly 

 .he cause of the discovery. Sejanus was then preparing to execute 

 ris final schemes for the destruction of Tiberius, when his intrigues 

 >ecame known to Antonia, who communicated her information through 

 .he freedman Pallas to the emperor. The ruin of the favourite brought 

 many past crimes to light, among others the murder of Drusus ; and 

 1/ivia met the fate which she deserved, her own mother, if we may 

 relieve one of the accounts given by Dio, opposing herself to the pardon 

 offered by the emperor. Under the reign of her grandson Caligula she 

 was at first highly honoured, receiving every distinction which bad 

 formerly been conferred on the celebrated Livia; but respect soou 

 changed to coldness and ill-treatment ; and at last her death was sup- 

 posed to be hastened by his neglect, if indeed it was not brought about 

 by more direct means. If we place her death in the first year of 



ialigula, she was about seventy-five years of age. The Emperor 

 Claudius had experienced from her when a child little of maternal 

 affection, but he honoured her memory when he came to the throne 

 in every way that the flattery of the age permitted. Pliny speaks of 

 a temple dedicated to her. Of the private life of Antouia little is 

 known. She was celebrated for her beauty, and still more for her 

 chastity, in an age too when that virtue was not common amongst 

 women of her rank. The beautiful head of Antonia is taken from a 

 gold medal in the British Museum. 



ANTONI'NUS LIBERA'LIS probably lived under the Autonines. 

 He is the author of a work in Greek, entitled ' A Collection of Meta- 

 morphoses : ' this collection is borrowed from a variety of authors, 

 and is curious for containing many passages of poets whose works are 

 now lost The best edition is that of H. Verheyk, Leyden, 1774, 8vo. 



ANTONI'NUS PIUS, or, with his full name, Titus Aurelius Fulvus 

 Bojonius Antoninus Pius, was the son of Aurelius Fulvus and Arria 

 Fadilla. He was born September 19, A.D. 86, in the reign of Domitian, 

 at Lanuvium (now Lavinia), a town of Latium, a few miles south of 

 the Alban Lake. His youthful years were spent at Lorium (a town 

 on the north side of the Tiber, not far from its mouth), under the care 

 of his paternal and maternal grandfathers, T. Aurelius Fulvus, who 

 bad twice been consul, and Arrius Antoninus, who also had twice 

 attained the same honour. 



Gold. British Museum. Diameter doubled. 



Through his extensive family connexions he inherited great wealth, 

 and was speedily raised to the successive dignities of quaestor, proctor, 

 and consul. His taste however was for a country life. When Hadrian 

 intrusted the administration of Italy to four men of consular rank, he 

 gave to Antoninus the government of that part in which his pos- 

 sessions lay. During his consulship and his subsequent government 

 of the province of Asia as pro-consul, there were, as his credulous 

 biographer informs us. many strange presages of his future elevation. 

 On his return to Rome he was often consulted by Hadrian on public 

 matters ; and finally he was adopted as the emperor's successor, on 

 condition of adopting himself, Marcus Antoninus, the son of his wife's 

 brother, and Lucius Verus, the son of ^Elius Verus, who had been 

 adopted by Hadrian, but had died prematurely. He then became 



