Antonello da Messina’s Ecce Homo; Saint Jerome in Penitence (c. 1460-1465) has a high estimate of $15 million. Courtesy of Sotheby's

It’s not every day that a work by Antonello da Messina comes to auction—especially one whose value and authenticity are bolstered by an extensive exhibition history, scholarly literature and clean provenance. Sotheby’s has secured a rare, jewel-like panel (c. 1460-1465) by the Sicilian Renaissance master, estimated at $10-15 million, which will lead its upcoming Old Masters week at its landmark Breuer headquarters in February.

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The double-sided panel unites two evocative compositions that exemplify Antonello’s innovative use of light—marked by soft modulation—and his groundbreaking naturalism in rendering human emotion and psychological presence. The front presents an emotionally charged and profoundly human Ecce Homo, portraying Christ as a youthful figure, bound, crowned with thorns and flinching in pain. The motif would go on to influence generations of painters, particularly within the Venetian school. Antonello himself revisited the subject repeatedly, with other examples now held in major museum collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Musei Civici di Palazzo Farnese and Collegio Alberoni in Piacenza and the Galleria Regionale della Sicilia at Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo.

The reverse offers a more lyrical image: Saint Jerome in the Desert, in which the saint is immersed in a luminous, atmospheric landscape that acts as an echo chamber, amplifying the work’s spiritual resonance and meditative calm. This approach was later adopted and refined by painters such as Giovanni Bellini, as seen in St. Francis in the Desert (ca. 1475-1480), now at the Frick Collection.

Likely used as a portable devotional object, the small-scale panel appears to have been carried by its owners during prayer, as suggested by the surface erosion around the saint—probably caused by repeated kissing and touching during acts of devotion. The Metropolitan Museum’s example is among its closest known comparables.

Only about 40 works by Antonello are known to survive, with most held in museum collections. This painting is widely believed to be one of the few still in private hands, and it will only be the second work of this caliber to appear at auction in a generation. The last was Portrait of a Man (known as Il Condottiere), now in the Musée du Louvre in Paris, acquired in 1865 from the collection of the Comte de Pourtalès-Gorgier at the insistence of Napoleon III. That acquisition marked one of the first major Renaissance works to enter the Louvre through the art market rather than via royal or ecclesiastical donation. Other, less significant examples that surfaced at auction have typically carried weaker attributions—often catalogued as “after” Antonello or attributed to followers or workshop members, rather than being confidently attributed to the master himself. Another devotional panel, The Madonna and Child with a Franciscan Monk in Adoration (recto) with Ecce Homo (verso), sold at Christie’s London in 2003 for $251,650, landing at the midpoint of its estimate. However, it lacked the exceptional exhibition history and documented provenance of........

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