Past Exhibition

All Objects

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Giovanni Battista Moroni
Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna and Child, ca. 1555
Oil on canvas
23 1/2 x 25 1/2 in. (59.7 x 64.8 cm)
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Samuel H. Kress Collection (1939.1.114)
Courtesy National Gallery of Art Washington

 

Derived from the tradition of the donor portrait, the sacred portrait is a genre invented by Moroni. The artist’s three surviving sacred portraits (one shown here, Gentleman in Contemplation of the Baptism of Christ, and Two Donors in Adoration before the Madonna and Child and St. Michael) are in this exhibition united for the first time. In all three, portraits of contemporary sitters who appear to pray to, or before, sacred figures dominate the composition.

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528)
Virgin and Child on a Crescent Moon with a Starry Crown and Scepter, dated 1516
Engraving
4 9/16 x 2 15/16 in. (11.6 x 7.4 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Fletcher Fund, 1919 (19.73.39)

 

Moroni derived the sacred figures in the Gentleman in Contemplation before the Madonna and Child from this popular devotional print, one of four versions produced by Dürer. Why Moroni chose this model is unknown; perhaps the portrait’s sitter owned an impression of it. Transforming Dürer’s image into a more austere yet more intimate depiction of the mother and child, Moroni eliminated the Virgin’s ornate crown and scepter, presenting instead the Christ Child clutching her finger.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Gentleman in Contemplation of the Baptism of Christ, mid-1550s 
Oil on canvas 
41 x 44 1/2 in. (104 x 113 cm)
Etro Collection

 

As in Moroni’s two other surviving sacred portraits, (Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna and Child, and Two Donors in Adoration before the Madonna and Child and St. Michael) the unidentified sitter appears to have been studied from life while the sacred scene beyond him is stylized. Why the sitter chose to be associated with St. John the Baptist is unknown; the saint may have been his namesake (“Giovanni Battista”).

Matteo Pagano (1515–1588)
Giardineto Novo di Punti Tagliati et Gropposi per Exercitio & Ornamento delle Donne
Venice: Matteo Pagano, 1554
Woodcut
7 5/8 x 6 3/8 in. (19.4 x 16.2 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Rogers Fund, 1921 (21.15.1bis )

 
The exquisite needlework on the collars and cuffs of the unidentified young men in the Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna and Child and the Gentleman in Contemplation of the Baptism of Christ is painted by Moroni with exceptional precision.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Two Donors in Adoration before the Madonna and Child and St. Michael, ca. 1557–60
Oil on canvas
35 1/4 x 38 1/2 in. (89.5 x 97.8 cm)
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond; Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund (62.20)
© Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond / Katherine Wetzel

 
This sacred portrait features background figures of the Madonna and Child modeled on those in an altarpiece by Moroni’s teacher, Moretto da Brescia, in the Church of Sant’Eufemia, Verona, while the unidentified couple appears to have been studied from life. The prayer book on the ledge suggests their devotional practice. Moroni’s sacred portraits have been associated with the contemplative prayer popularized by St. Ignatius of Loyola’s Exercitia Spiritualia, in which devotees are instructed to imagine sacred scenes as they pray.

St. Ignatius of Loyola
Exercitia Spiritualia
Rome: Apud Antonium Bladum, 1548
6 1/8 x 4 3/8 in. (15.5 x 11 cm)
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (49043050)

 

Moroni’s sacred portraits have been associated with the contemplative prayer popularized by texts such as St. Ignatius’s Exercitia Spiritualia (Spiritual Exercises). One of the most popular devotional books in the history of Christianity, the Exercitia Spiritualia was written by the founder of the Jesuit order in his native Spanish and first published in Latin in 1548. The four-week program instructs the devotee to imagine using all five senses for full immersion in the contemplation of sacred episodes.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Bust of Isotta Brembati, ca. 1550
Oil on canvas
21 5/8 x 18 1/2 in. (55 x 47 cm)
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (58AC00087)
Fondazione Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

 
This is believed to be the earliest of Moroni’s independent portraits of women, which number about fifteen of the nearly one hundred twenty-five portraits attributed to him today. Identified in the nineteenth century as the Bergamasque noblewoman and poet Isotta Brembati, the sitter was painted again by Moroni at a later date in the full-length seated portrait; she may have been the conduit for Moroni’s painting of several other members of her family in the 1550s and 1560s.

Giovanni Battista Moroni 
Lay Brother with a Fictive Frame, ca. 1557
Oil on canvas
21 3/4 x 19 7/8 in. (55.2 x 50.5 cm)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main (904)

 
One of Moroni’s most accomplished portraits despite its modest size and seemingly humble sitter, this depiction of an unidentified lay brother of an uncertain monastic order (several wearing white habits) raises questions. What is the purpose of the fictive wood frame painted on the canvas — which is so convincing that it has often been mistaken for an actual frame — and consequently, where, how, and for what purpose would the portrait have been displayed?

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Lucrezia Agliardi Vertova, dated 1557
Oil on canvas
36 x 27 in. (91.4 x 68.6 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Theodore M. Davis Collection, Bequest of Theodore M. Davis, 1915 (30.95.255)
Inscription: LVCRETIA NOBILISS. ALEXIS ALARDI / BERGOMENSIS FILIA HONORATISS. / FRANCISCI CATANEI VERTVATIS / VXOR DIVAE ANNAE ALBINENSE / TEMPLVM IPSA STATVENDV CVRAVIT. / M.D.LVII. [Lucrezia, daughter of the most noble Alessio Agliardi of Bergamo, wife of the most honorable Francesco Cataneo Vertova, herself founded the church of Sant’Anna in Albino. 1557].

 

The inscription credits the noblewoman Lucrezia Agliardi Vertova with founding, in 1525, the Carmelite church and convent of Sant’Anna in Moroni’s native Albino, where the portrait hung until the Napoleonic suppressions of the late eighteenth century. Widowed at a young age, Vertova appears to have been a tertiary of the convent. The longstanding identification of her as its abbess is unsupported by documentary evidence. She wears a brown dress, clasped partlet, and veil that are appropriate to her social standing and not, as has been proposed in the past, the costume of a nun.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Bust Portrait of a Young Man with an Inscription, ca. 1560
Oil on canvas
18 5/8 x 15 5/8 in. (47.2 x 39.8 cm)
The National Gallery, London; Layard Bequest, 1916 (NG 3129)
Inscriptions: DVM SPIRITVS / HOS REGET ARTVS [As long as breath animates these limbs], from Virgil’s Aeneid IV, 336; below, in gold-colored ink in a different script, ANNOR XXX [of thirty years].
© The National Gallery, London

 
The inscription from Virgil’s Aeneid quotes Aeneas professing his commitment to Dido, queen of Carthage, as he is forced to abandon her. This may connote amorous devotion, though the passage appears on a number of sixteenth-century portrait medals as a statement of religious fidelity. Its significance here is unknown. The painting of the parapet and inscription on top of the figure was an unusual compositional change in Moroni’s portraiture.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Portrait of a Young Woman, ca. 1575
Oil on canvas
20 3/8 x 16 3/8 in. (51.8 x 41.5 cm)
Private collection
Photo Michael Bodycomb

 

The unidentified young woman, probably from Moroni’s native Albino, wears a piercing expression and a sumptuous dress apparently of brocaded silk with silver wire. Such textiles (see the fragment of brocaded velvet) challenged artists to convey various materials and their effects. For example, Moroni communicates the shimmer of the textile’s silver wire through fine, slightly undulating lines of white paint.

Italian or Spanish
Fragment of Brocaded Velvet, 16th century
Composite fragment of red cut velvet voided on a blue ground with a pattern weft of yellow silk and paired drawn wire and details brocaded in silver and silver-gilt filé bouclé
11 3/8 x 22 3/4 in. (28.9 x 57.8 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Nanette B. Kelekian, in honor of Olga Raggio, 2002 (2002.494.598)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York / Art Resource, NY

Photomicrograph of velvet fragment at 20x magnification 
Photo Cristina Balloffet Carr, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Like these joined fragments, whose blue color was presumably more vibrant in the sixteenth century, the pink textile worn by the sitter in Portrait of a Young Woman may have been woven in silk and brocaded with silver-gilt and silver thread, with fine wire woven across the ground to create a shimmering effect. The production of textiles like these — a specialty of Florence but also made in Lombardy — was labor-intensive and extremely costly.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Portrait of a Woman,  ca. 1575−79
Oil on canvas
19 1/4 x 16 1/2 in. (49 x 42 cm)
Private collection
Photo Michael Bodycomb

 

Like most of the women Moroni painted, the sitter wears clothing and accessories that display her wealth and status, and there are no identifying attributes or inscriptions. Her pendant cross, like that worn in the full-length portrait of Isotta Brembati, is suspended from a pearl necklace.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Alessandro Vittoria, ca. 1551
Oil on canvas
32 1/2 x 25 5/8 in. (82.5 x 65 cm)
Gemäldegalerie, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (78)
KHM-Museumsverband

 

The sculptor Alessandro Vittoria owned at least five painted portraits of himself by different artists. Presumably, this is one of the “two large portraits” of him mentioned in the inventory made after his death. The thinness of the painted flesh on the face and the depiction of a figure, with a rolled sleeve, in the process of studying, displaying, or working on a sculpture seem to anticipate Moroni’s Tailor. The portrait was probably painted about 1551, when both painter and sculptor were in Vittoria’s native city of Trent.

Roman
Nude Male Torso, 2nd century CE
Marble
14 1/4 x 7 1/4 x 3 3/4 in. (36.2 x 18.4 x 9.5 cm)
Detroit Institute of Arts; Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Booth (64.575)
Detroit Institute of Arts / Bridgeman Images

Sculptural fragments such as this antique male torso appear in Moroni’s Alessandro Vittoria and The Man in Pink. In The Man in Pink, the fallen sculpture appears to be allegorical, while in Alessandro Vittoria, it seems to be simply an object in the sculptor’s studio. Throughout the Renaissance, fragments like this were studied and collected by artists who used them as points of departure for figural invention.

Giovanni Battista Moroni (1520/24–1579/80)
Gabriel de la Cueva, dated 1560
Oil on canvas
44 1/8 x 33 1/8 in. (112 x 84 cm)
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen, Berlin (79.01)
Inscription: AQVI ESTO SIN TEMOR / Y DELA MVERTE / NO HE PAVOR. [I am here without fear and of death I have no dread]; below, “M.D.LX. / Io: Bap. Moronus. p.” [1560 / Giovanni Battista Moroni painted it].
bpk Bildagentur / Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Jörg P. Anders / Art Resource, NY

 

One of Moroni’s most prestigious sitters, Gabriel de la Cueva y Girón, Count of Ledesma and Huelma, became viceroy of Navarre in 1560, fifth duke of Alburquerque in 1563, and served as governor of Milan from 1564 until his death in 1571. How and when he and Moroni met is unknown. They may have been introduced by Isotta Brembati or others among the pro-Spanish elite in Bergamo. The Spanish inscription reportedly recurs in the dukes of Alburquerque family history. Here, it draws attention to the sitter’s prominently displayed rapier.

Northern Italian
Rapier,  ca. 1550/60
Steel, gilt iron, wood, brass and copper wire
46 7/8 x 10 in. (119 cm x 25.5 cm overall)
Imperial Armoury, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (A 683)
KHM-Museumsverband

 
This rapier (a long thin sword suitable for thrusting) bears on its ricasso (the unsharpened part of the blade just above the knuckle guard) a sailing ship, which is the maker’s mark of the city of Nave, near Brescia and not far from Moroni’s Bergamo. The hilt — the same type as that in Gabriel de la Cueva — is typical of its time in its somewhat heavier form with relatively short, straight quillons (arms of the crossbar). In the second half of the sixteenth century, these elements become lighter and thinner.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Bearded Man with a Letter, dated 1561
Oil on canvas
37 5/8 x 29 1/8 in. (95.5 x 73.3 cm)
Private Collection, courtesy Fabrizio Moretti
Inscription: On the column fragment, M.D.LXI. / Io. Bap. Moronus. p. [1561 / Giovanni Battista Moroni painted it]; on the letter, Mag. co ; Batt. / Marini (?) / Bergamo.
© Gianni Canali

 
Holding a letter in his left hand, the sitter offers clues to his identity. The form of address Mag. (Magnifico) indicates a high social status; the word Bergamo, near the bottom of the paper, presumably alludes to where he was from; and what may be — though the inscription is very difficult to read — the given name Batt. (Battista) and the surname Marini suggest that he might be identified with a Battista Marini, resident of Albino (close to Bergamo), born in 1521.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Giovanni Bressani,  dated 1562
Oil on canvas
45 3/4 x 35 in. (116.2 x 88.8 cm)
National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; Purchased by Private Treaty, 1977 (NG 2347)
Inscriptions: On the base of foot-shaped inkstand, IO: BAP. MORON. / PINXIT QVEM NON VIDIT [Giovanni Battista Moroni painted him whom he did not see]; on the bottom of the sheet of paper in the foreground, CORPORIS EFFIGIEM ISTA QVIDEM BENE PICTA TABELLA / EXPRIMIT, AST ANIMI TOT MEA SCRIPTA MEI. / M. D. LXII. [This painted picture well depicts the image of my body, but that of my spirit is given by my many writings. 1562]
National Galleries of Scotland

 
This is one of Moroni’s few posthumous portraits. Technical examination revealed ornamentation beneath the black paint of the sitter’s cap that is nearly identical to that which appears on a portrait medal of Bressani; thus the portrait was probably based on the medal. The inscription on the base of the foot-shaped inkwell seems to corroborate the posthumous status of the portrait and thus explain why this depiction lacks the immediacy and emphatic naturalism typical of Moroni’s portraiture.

Arsenio
Giovanni Bressani, ca. 1561
Bronze
2 1/16 in. (5.3 cm)
Collection Mario Scaglia
Inscriptions: Obverse, IO. BRESS. BER. POE. ILL. ÆT. ANN. LXX [Giovanni Bressani of Bergamo, illustrious poet, aged seventy], signed APΣEN EΠOIH [Arsenio made it]; reverse, CVIQVE. IVXTA. MERITVM [To each according to merit].
Stefano di Virgilio

 
This medal appears to be the model for Moroni’s portrait of Giovanni Bressani. The reverse displays a laurel branch (a conventional honor of poets) crossed with a whip or scourge with the motto “To each according to merit,” presumably alluding to the rewards (the laurel branch) earned by work and discipline (the whip). This is one of only two medals signed by the obscure medalist Arsenio; the other portrays Antonio Navagero, who was also painted by Moroni (Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan).

Giovanni Bressani (1489/90–1560)
Prose e poesie, 16th century
Folio 78 (verso), 248 folios
8 1/8 x 6 1/4 in. (20.5 x 15.8 cm)
Biblioteca Civica Angelo Mai e Archivi Storici, Bergamo (MA 145)

 

This collection of poems presumably records Giovanni Bressani’s handwriting. In Moroni’s portrait of Bressani, the writer holds a piece of paper on which is written a poem beginning with the word sempre (always). This may have been chosen in the context of memorial — Bressani’s spirit (his writings) lives on after his physical body has perished — and may also refer to a specific poem. The only poem by Bressani that begins with the word sempre is displayed here and begins nearly halfway down the page.

Giovanni Battista Moroni 
The Tailor (Il Sarto, or Il Tagliapanni), ca. 1570
Oil on canvas
39 1/8 x 30 1/4 in. (99.5 x 77 cm)
The National Gallery, London (NG 697)
© The National Gallery, London

 
Moroni’s most celebrated painting, The Tailor is unusual in Renaissance portraiture for its presentation of a man performing his trade. It has been debated whether its subject is indeed a tailor, a cloth-cutter, or a cloth merchant, or if the picture is an “emblematical portrait” in allusion to the unknown sitter’s name (the surname Tagliapanni, for example, meaning “cloth-cutter”). Presumably only a tailor would mark up a piece of fabric with chalk, as is seen here.

French
Shears, 16th century
Iron
11 in. (28 cm)
MAK – Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna (F 357)
MAK / Hanady Mustafa

 
Shears like those represented in The Tailor were critical to the production of the luxurious clothing worn by many of Moroni’s sitters. These shears are believed to have been made in France, though instruments of this kind were also produced in Lombardy. The decoration of the inner sections beneath the finger holes with facing figures suggests that the shears were made for an individual of some distinction, which may also explain their fine state of preservation.
Giovanni Battista Moroni
Portrait of a Gentleman and His Two Children, ca. 1572–75
Oil on canvas
49 3/8 x 38 5/8 in. (125.3 x 98 cm)
National Gallery of Ireland Collection, Dublin; Purchased, 1866 (NGI 105)
Inscription: On letters, “Al Mag. Sig. Albino”; “ Albino.”
© National Gallery of Ireland

 

 
In Moroni’s only known triple portrait, the body language of the man protectively embracing the children suggests that he is their father, but the popular assumption that he is a widower cannot be confirmed. The older child, a girl, wears bows in her hair, while the younger child may be a boy. In the Renaissance, boys were dressed in long skirts until they reached the age — about six or seven years — to wear breeches.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Gabriele Albani (?), ca. 1572–73
Oil on canvas
43 1/4 x 30 1/4 in. (110 x 77 cm)
Private collection

 
Moroni rarely used this type of majestic frontal pose. Partially obscured by the lynx lining of his black silk damask gown, the sitter’s gold chain suspending a cross and winged lion connotes the endowment of a knighthood, presumably the Order of the Knights of St. Mark. The sitter was once believed to be Gian Gerolamo Albani, the most famous member of the Albani family and father of Lucia Albani.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Gian Ludovico Madruzzo, ca. 1551–52
Oil on canvas
78 5/8 x 45 5/8 in. (199.8 x 116 cm)
Art Institute of Chicago; Charles H. and Mary F.S. Worcester Collection (1929.912)
Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY

 
This and Moroni’s depiction of the sitter’s brother (Gian Federico Madruzzo; National Gallery of Art, Washington) are believed to be the artist’s earliest full-length portraits. Together with Titian’s portrait of their uncle, the prince-bishop of Trent, Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo (Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand), they once hung in Trent’s Castello del Buonconsiglio. Moroni is recorded in Trent about 1548 and in 1551−52 during the Catholic Council. Gian Ludovico Madruzzo began his ecclesiastic career at age thirteen, when he was appointed canon of Brixen Cathedral.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Lucia Albani Avogadro, called La Dama in Rosso (The Lady in Red), ca. 1554–57
Oil on canvas
61 x 42 in. (155 x 106.8 cm)
The National Gallery, London (NG 1023)
© The National Gallery, London

 
Daughter of Gian Gerolamo Albani, the collaterale generale of Venice, Lucia was celebrated by her contemporaries as a talented poet. Giovanni Bressani dedicated a poem to her, and the poet Bernardo Tasso praised her in his verses. However, nothing of this aspect of her identity is conveyed in this portrait, which centers instead on the exquisite crimson satin overgown that gives the painting its popular title.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Isotta Brembati, ca. 1555–56
Oil on canvas
63 x 45 1/4 in. (160 x 115 cm)
Fondazione Museo di Palazzo Moroni, Bergamo – Lucretia Moroni Collection

 
The most opulently dressed of Moroni’s sitters, Isotta, whom Moroni painted in another portrait, wears a spectacular brocade dress complemented with accessories that indicate her wealth and status: a marten with a jeweled head, a pendent cross of precious stones, a gold- or gilt-bronze-handled fan, and other jewelry. Nothing in the portrait suggests that the sitter was an accomplished poet who composed in four languages.

Spanish
Pendant Cross with Emeralds, 1575–1650
Gold, emeralds, enamel, pearls
3 7/8 in. (9.8 cm)
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Museum purchase, 1945 (57.1745)

 
Like the pendant cross depicted in Isotta Brembati, this cross represents a type of jewelry particularly popular in Spain and with those associated with the Spanish court, as was Isotta Brembati. It reflects a trend in jewelry design in Europe in the sixteenth century, when precious gems and pearls were being imported to Europe in ever-greater quantities from the Americas and Asia and jewelry design increasingly emphasized their display.

Venetian
Fan Handle, ca. 1550
Gilt copper alloy, pierced and engraved; modern feathers
7 x 3 1/4 in. (17.8 x 8.3 cm)
Victoria and Albert Museum, London (105-1882)
© The Victoria and Albert Museum

 
This rare fan handle, similar to that in Isotta Brembati, was designed to hold feathers in its narrow aperture and could be attached to a chain affixed to a girdle around a woman’s waist, through the suspension loop at the end. Feathers were replaced when they became worn or damaged, or if the fan’s owner wished to change the color and shape.

Venetian
Marten’s Head,  ca. 1550–59
Gold with enamel, rubies, garnets, and pearls; modern pelt; synthetic whiskers
L. 3 5/16 in. (8.4 cm) (jewel only)
The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; Museum acquisition by exchange, 1967 (57.1982)

 
Known in the Renaissance as zibellini (a term that refers specifically to sable but includes other furs), marten furs like the present example and that depicted in Isotta Brembati were associated with chastity, fertility, and childbirth and, at least since the nineteenth century, were also thought to have served as flea pelts (supposedly to attract fleas from the wearer onto the fur), a popular theory that has been questioned. Above all, these were luxury items that indicated social status.
Giovanni Battista Moroni 
Faustino Avogadro, called Il Cavaliere dal Piede Ferito (The Knight with the Wounded Foot),  ca. 1555–60
Oil on canvas
79 5/8 x 41 7/8 in. (202.3 x 106.5 cm)
The National Gallery, London (NG 1022)
© The National Gallery, London

 

 
Married to Lucia Albani, Faustino Avogadro was among the associates of the Albani clan banished in 1563 from territories of the Venetian Republic after a bloody feud between the Albani and Brembati. He reportedly died at age thirty-seven by drunkenly falling into a well and breaking his neck. The nature of the ailment requiring the apparatus on his left leg is unknown; speculations include a battle injury or “drop-foot” or a related condition that affects the movement of the ankle.

German
Sleeve of Mail, 16th century
Steel, copper alloy
15 11/16 x 13 in. (40 x 33 cm)
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Gift of Prince Albrecht Radziwill, 1927 (27.183.29)
© The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource, NY

 
Like the gussets worn in the portrait of Faustino Avogadro, this sleeve of fine mail (from the French maille, meaning “link” or “mesh”) would have been worn with plate armor to protect the parts of the body left exposed between the plates. Such fine links offered greater flexibility, were lighter and more comfortable to wear than mail of larger links, and were more time-consuming and thus more expensive to produce.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Giovanni Gerolamo Grumelli, called Il Cavaliere in Rosa (The Man in Pink), dated 1560
Oil on canvas
85 x 48 3/8 in. (216 x 123 cm)
Fondazione Museo di Palazzo Moroni, Bergamo – Lucretia Moroni Collection
Inscriptions: On the fictive relief at lower right, MAS EL ÇAGVERO QVE EL PRIMERO [More he who follows than the first]; on the stone fragment at bottom right, M.D.LX / Jo. Bap. Moronus [1560 / Giovanni Battista Moroni].
Photo Mauro Magliani

 
The second husband of Isotta Brembati, Giovanni Gerolamo Grumelli was born into one of the most prominent of Bergamo’s noble families. His opulent attire of woven pink silk with silver plant and flower motifs makes this one of Moroni’s most arresting portraits. Seemingly fallen from the niche above, the sculptural fragment (similar to the torso in Alessandro Vittoria) conveys the passage of time or succession of ages.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Bernardo Spini, ca. 1573−75
Oil on canvas
77 1/2 x 38 5/8 in. (197 x 98 cm)
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (58AC00082)
Inscription: BERNARDVS SPINVS / OBYT AN. MDCXII / ETATIS LXXVI [Bernardo Spini died in the year 1612 aged 76].
Fondazione Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

 
A member of one of the most important noble families of Albino, Bernardo Spini was involved in the local dyeing industry and wool market and held a number of public offices. This portrait and Pace Rivola Spini are the only known pendants of full-length portraits in Moroni’s oeuvre.

Giovanni Battista Moroni
Pace Rivola Spini, ca. 1573−75
Oil on canvas
77 1/2 x 38 5/8 in. (197 x 98 cm)
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo (58AC00083)
Inscription: PAX RIVOLA SPINVS / OBYT AN. 1613 ETATIS 72 [Pace Rivola Spini died in the year 1613 aged 72]
Fondazione Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

 
A pendant to Bernardo Spini, this is the only known portrait by Moroni of a standing female figure presented at full length and is the earliest known independent portrait of its kind in the Italian Renaissance. Pace came from a noble family and married into the most important family in Albino, but in the larger social context of Italy, her rank did not warrant her representation in the form of portraiture typically reserved for the most powerful men in Europe.