The Invisible in the Visible. The Annunciation by Antonello da Messina from Narrative to Icon

The power of the images and the empathetic relationship it engenders with artists and viewers implys a new approach to the aesthetic experience through the sensory and emotional aspects that take place in the process of invention, construction, and interpretation of the artwork. Such a critical reflection leads to a revision of the traditional critical category of formalism and towards a new approach to the work of art as a system of morphological signifiers, which can be understood as an “iconology of style”. A study of the Annunciation as an artistic subject calls into question problems concerning the re-composition of the biblical narrative into an image, but also the problem of how to depict what is not figurable, which is the mystery of the Incarnation of Christ. What role do the textual and iconographic traditions play in determining the choices available to the artists? Antonello da Messina, an artist at the crossroads between the 15^th century tradition and the early-modern age, engaged in testing both the Albertian representation of space and the narrative iconic mode of Flemish art, created a new kind of Annunciation, as an essential and non-figurable icon capable of incarnating the artist and its relationship with the viewer, and the invisibility of the dogma.