Resumen de "Antonello Messaneus me pinxit": Antonello, la mémorie de Messine et l'identité sicilienne
On December 28, 1908, the Sicilian city of Messina was almost entirely destroyed by an earthquake followed by a tsunami. In addiction to considerable loss of life, historical monuments, works of art, and archives were destroyed by the catastrophe, as well as by the hygienic reconstruction of the city interrupted by the disasters of te Second World War. THe city, left bloodless, cutoff from a considerable part of its history and its history and identity, found in the exaltation of Antonello da Messina a means of reconstituting its little known artistic and cultural past. Researchers, artists and local elected officials enedeavoured to recuperate the figure of Antonello, putting forward his "Sicilianess" and the ties that bound him to his life as well as in his work. In the course of the 20th century the "Quattrocento" painter served to revalorize the heritage and specificity of Sicily in the recently unified peninsula where the North-South imbalance inundated all the domains, from economy to culture, from political discourses to the writing of history. ANtonello became an instrument of political claim, lifted up as a symbol of Sicilian excellence, from tha major exhibition in 1953, where the speeches of the local authorities were tinged with affirmations of the identity, to th G7 in 2017 where three of his works were sent to Taormina in order to re`resent the island and Italy.
