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(c) 2022 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Giovanni Battista Moroni
(c) 2022 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
(c) 2022 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Giovanni Battista Moroni

Albino, Italy, about 1525 - 1578
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BiographyMoroni, Giovanni [Giovan] Battista
(b Albino, ?1520–24; d Albino, ?after March 5, 1578).
Francesco Frangi
https://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2319/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T059693
Published online: 2003
updated bibliography, 16 September 2010; updated and revised, 31 March 2000

Italian painter. He was the most significant painter of the 16th-century school of Bergamo and is best known for his portraits, which feature a naturalistic rendering of both faces and costume and an objective approach to character.

1. Early career, to c. 1560.
A document dated 6 March 1549 refers to Moroni as an administrative procurator, which implies that he was then at least 25 years old. He was trained in Brescia, in the workshop of Moretto. Moroni’s religious paintings, particularly the early works, are characterized by explicit borrowings from Moretto’s pictures. Two drawings by Moroni (both 1543; Brescia, Pin. Civ. Tosio–Martinengo), his first securely dated works, show figures of saints copied from paintings by Moretto. It is likely that Moroni collaborated with the Brescian painter in some of his works: for instance, some scholars have identified his hand in Moretto’s St Roch and the Angel (Budapest, Mus. F.A.) and the Coronation of the Virgin (Brescia, S Angelo). Others have attributed outright to Moroni paintings once given to Moretto, for example the two Angels (London, N.G.) and the Assumption of the Virgin (Orzivecchi, SS Pietro e Paolo).

In the second half of the 1540s Moroni was working in Trent, contemporaneously with the first session of the Council. In 1548 he executed an Annunciation (Trent, Congregazione di Carità, on dep. Osp. Riuniti) and a St Clare (Trent, Mus. Dioc.; on dep.) for the church of S Chiara there. In 1549 he is documented in Brescia and his native Albino, and in that year, according to Tassi (1793), he also executed the frescoes (destr.) in the Palazzo Spini in Bergamo. The portraits of the poet Isotta Brembati (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara) and Marco Antonio Savelli (Lisbon, Mus. Gulbenkian), presumably early works, show Moroni’s impressive qualities as a portrait painter. He was still in Trent in the early 1550s, and the portraits of Ludovico Madruzzo (Chicago, IL, A. Inst.) and Gianfederico Madruzzo (Washington, DC, N.G.A.), nephews of Cristoforo Madruzzo, Prince Bishop of Trent, can be dated to these years. According to Bartoli (1780), the altarpiece of the Virgin in Glory with the Four Fathers of the Church and St John the Evangelist (Trent, S Maria Maggiore) dates from 1551, and this is confirmed by stylistic considerations. The picture, which is modelled on Moretto’s altarpiece of the same subject (Frankfurt am Main, Städel. Kstinst. & Städt. Gal.), is exemplary in the severity of its formal arrangement, in its clear exposition of the doctrinal content and in the kind of image required by the Counter-Reformation, to which Moroni remained faithful in all his religious works.


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Giovanni Battista Moroni: Bartolommeo Bonghi (died 1584), oil on canvas, 40 x 32 1/4 in. (101.6 x 81.9 cm), shortly after 1553 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Joseph Pulitzer Bequest, 1913, Accession ID:13.177); photo © The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110001612

For the rest of the 1550s Moroni’s activity was concentrated in the Bergamo region. Two paintings of the Assumption of the Virgin (Cenate Sopra, parish church; Oneta, parish church) and the Crucifixion with SS Francis and Anthony (Bergamo, Suore della Beata Capitanio) probably date from this period. In these works Moroni’s treatment of formulae derived from Moretto is more academic, characterized by colours of an enamel-like brightness and a greater clarity of design (see fig.). Dated and datable portraits of these years include the Portrait of a Young Nobleman (1553; Honolulu, HI, Acad. A.), the Portrait of ?Michel de l’Hôpital (1554; Milan, Ambrosiana) and Lucrezia Vertova (1556–7; New York, Met.). It is probably in this period that he executed the full-length Portrait of a Gentleman (London, N.G.), which depicts a member of the Avogadro family; the unadorned setting and direct representation of the sitter testify to Moroni’s divergence from the canons of portraiture as developed by Titian.

The date 1560 appears on the portraits of the Duke of Albuquerque (Berlin, Bodemus.), The Poet (Brescia, Pin. Civ. Tosio–Martinengo) and the celebrated ‘Cavaliere in Rosa’ (Gian Girolamo Grumelli; Bergamo, Moroni priv. col., see Pope-Hennessy, p. 223). The sharp colouring of the Cavaliere’s costume indicates Moroni’s rejection of Venetian tonal harmonies in favour of dazzling, metallic tones used by contemporary Brescian painters. The sitter is portrayed against a background of Classical ruins, a device Moroni used on several occasions, often (as in this case) with reliefs and inscriptions of a moralizing or celebratory tone.

2. Mature work, c. 1561 and after.
Numerous documents testify to Moroni’s presence in Albino after 1561 and particularly in the 1570s, when he was employed in the town council’s administration. During the 1560s he executed the Crucifixion with SS Bernard and Anthony of Padua (Albino, S Giuliano), the Virgin and Child with SS Barbara and Catherine (Bondo Petello, S Barbara) and Christ Carrying the Cross (Albino, Santuario della Madonna del Pianto). The unpretentious and melancholic tenor of these paintings and their engaging naturalistic immediacy make them among the artist’s finest religious works.

Moroni’s style became more austere during the 1560s, as is evident from the many dated works of the period. The standard he executed for the parish church of Pradalunga, with St Christopher on one side and the Glory of the Eucharist on the other, was valued on 1 July 1562, indicating that it had just been completed. The altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin (Palazzago, S Giovanni Battista) dates from 1564 according to Calvi (1676–7), and the date 1566 is inscribed on the Deposition (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara) from the church of the Zoccolanti in Gandino. The altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with SS Peter, Paul and John the Evangelist in S Pietro at Parre was completed in 1567. Compositionally it recalls Moretto’s Rovelli Altarpiece (Brescia, Pin. Civ. Tosio–Martinengo), but its pale Mannerist inflections link it to works by the Cremonese painters Camillo Boccaccino and Bernardino Campi. The Virgin and Child (1567; Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara) for the church of the Madonna della Ripa at Desenzano al Serio is a variant of Giovanni Bellini’s panel of the same subject and date (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara), which once hung in the convent of the Monache di Alzano. The painting by Bellini was copied by Moroni, probably earlier, in another canvas (Brescia, priv. col.; see Rossi, 1977, p. 56). One of Moroni’s most praised works, the Last Supper (Romano di Lombardia, S Maria Assunta), was commissioned in 1565 but delivered only in 1569.

Among the portraits of the early 1560s are those of Giovanni Bressani (1562; Edinburgh, N.G.) and Pietro Secco Suardo (1563; Florence, Uffizi). In 1565 Moroni executed the Portrait of a Member of the Mosca Family (Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and Antonio Navagero (Milan, Brera), which in its directness and intimacy typifies Moroni’s refusal to engage in the rhetoric of display. A similarly unconventional treatment of the sitter can be seen in the portrait of Giovanni Antonio Pantera (Florence, Uffizi), of uncertain date. The date 1567 has been uncovered on the Portrait of a 29-year-old Nobleman (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara), the intensity of which makes it one of Moroni’s portrait masterpieces. The lively Portrait of a Young Girl of the Redetti Family (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara) and ‘The Tailor’ (c. 1570; London, N.G.), aspects of which imitate the work of Caravaggio (Longhi), also belong to this period.

Among the most typical works in Moroni’s vast oeuvre are devotional portraits, in which the sitter is depicted with a religious scene in the background. Examples of this genre are Two Devotees of the Virgin and Child and St Michael (Richmond, VA, Mus. F.A.) and the Crucified Christ with SS John the Baptist and Sebastian with a Donor (Bergamo, S Alessandro della Croce), which is later in date. Even in the late religious works Moroni displays an immunity to the formal complexities of the Mannerist style, preferring to present religious scenes in a simple, straightforward manner. This purposefully conservative attitude is most apparent in his continued use of the polyptych format into the 1560s (e.g. in S Bernardo in Roncola) and the 1570s (S Giorgio in Fiorano al Serio, begun 1575; S Vittore in Gaverina, dated 1576).

Moroni’s late portraits, on the other hand, show a development in the direction of softer, more atmospheric effects, in which the objective and naturalistic rendering characteristic of the earlier works is replaced by a more full-bodied treatment, apparent, for example, in the pair of Spini portraits (Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara), datable to the early 1570s on the basis of the sitters’ ages. Similar stylistic characteristics are evident in the portraits of Vincenzo Guarinoni (1572; Cleveland, OH, Mus. A.), Jacopo Foscarini (1575; Budapest, Mus. F.A.), Paolo Vidoni Cedrelli (1576; Bergamo, Gal. Accad. Carrara) and in the Portrait of ?Francesco Spini (1576; Boston, MA, Isabella Stewart Gardner Mus.). Moroni’s late religious works include the Coronation of the Virgin (Bergamo, S Alessandro alla Croce), the altarpiece of the Virgin and Saints in Bergamo Cathedral, both dated 1576, the altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with SS Peter and Andrew (1577) in S Andrea in Fino del Monte and the incomplete Last Judgement (Goriago, S Pancrazio), commissioned in 1577.

Unpublished sources
Trent, Bib. Com., MS. 1207 [F. Bartoli: La pitture, sculture ed architetture che adornano le chiese ed altri pubblici luoghi della città di Trento, 1780]

Bibliography
D. Calvi: Effemeride sacro profana di quanto di memorabile sia successo in Bergamo, sua diocese et territorio, 3 vols (Milan, 1676–7)
F. M. Tassi: Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti bergamaschi (Bergamo, 1793), i, pp. 162–72
C. von Lutzow: ‘Giovanni Battista Moroni’, Graphische Künste, 14 (1891), pp. 21–6
G. Lafenestre: ‘Les Portraits des Madruzzi par Titian et G. B. Moroni’, Revue de l’art ancien et moderne, 21 (1907), pp. 351–60
F. Frizzoni: ‘Moretto und Moroni: Eine Charakterisierung auf Grund zweier massgebender Studienblätter’, Münchner Jahrbuch der bildenden Kunst, 7 (1912), pp. 28–38
M. Biancale: ‘Giovanni Battista Moroni e i pittori bresciani’, L’Arte, 17 (1914), pp. 289–300, 321–2
A. Locatelli Milesi: ‘Un grande ritrattista: G. B. Moroni’, Emporium, 44 (1916), pp. 376–87
H. Merten: Giovanni Battista Moroni: Des Meisters Gemälde und Zeichnungen (Marburg, 1928)
R. Longhi: ‘Quesiti caravaggeschi. II: I precedenti’, Pinacoteca, 5–6 (1929), pp. 258–320; also in Me pinxit e quesiti cava vaggeschi (Florence, 1968)
G. Lendorff: G. B. Moroni der Porträt-Maler von Bergamo (Winterthur, 1933)
D. Cugini: Moroni pittore (Bergamo, 1939)
G. Gombosi: Il Moretto da Brescia (Basle, 1943)
W. Suida: ‘Aggiunte all’opera di Giovanni Battista Moroni’, Emporium, 109 (1949), pp. 51–7
I pittori della realtà in Lombardia (exh. cat. by R. Longhi, R. Cipriani and G. Testori, Milan, Pal. Reale, 1953)
J. Pope-Hennessy: The Portrait in the Renaissance (New York and London, 1966), pp. 205, 207, 223, 321
M. Gregori: ‘Il ritratto di Alessandro Vittoria del Moroni a Vienna’, Paragone, 27/317–19 (1976), pp. 91–100
F. Rossi: ‘Giovan Battista Moroni nel quarto centenario della morte’, Notizie del Palazzo Albani: Rivista quadrimestrale di storia dell’arte [Università degli studi di Urbino], 6 (1977), pp. 50–59
H. Brigstocke: ‘A Moroni Portrait for Edinburgh’, Burlington Magazine, 120 (1978), pp. 457–61
C. Gould: ‘G. B. Moroni and the Genre Portrait in the Cinquecento’, Apollo, 108 (1978), pp. 316–21
G. Testori and G. Frangi: Moroni in Val Seriana (Brescia, 1978)
Giovanni Battista Moroni: 400th Anniversary Exhibition (exh. cat. by A. Braham, London, N.G., 1978)
M. Gregori: ‘Giovanni Battista Moroni’, I pittori bergamaschi: Il cinquecento (Bergamo, 1979), 3, pp. 95–377 [with list of works and bibliog.]
M. Cali: ‘“Verità” e “Religione” nella pittura di Giovan Battista Moroni (a proposito della mostra di Bergamo)’, Prospettiva, 23 (1980), pp. 11–23
G. Previtali: ‘Il bernoccolo del conoscitore (a proposito del presunto Ritratto di Gian Girolamo Albani attribuito al Moroni)’, Prospettiva, 24 (1981), pp. 24–31
The Genius of Venice, 1500–1600 (exh. cat., ed. C. Hope and J. Martineau; London, RA, 1983), pp. 186–92 [entries by M. Gregori]
Seicento a Bergamo (exh. cat., Bergamo, Pal. Ragione, 1987), pp. 47–50, 227–8 [entries by V. Guazzoni]
F. Rossi: ‘Giovan Battista Moroni: Ritratti di famiglia’, Osservatorio delle arti, 4 (1990), pp. 68–73
S. Milesi: Moroni e il primo Cinquecento bergamasco: Lotto, Previtali, Cariani, Palma il Vecchio, Licinio (Bergamo, 1991)
M. Previto: ‘Un nuovo documento per Giovan Battista Moroni’, Paragone, 45/527 (1994), pp. 65–8
M. Di Tanna: ‘Il ritratto di Bartolomeo Bonghi nel Metropolitan Museum di New York’, Bergomum, 89/3 (1994), pp. 73–88
I. B. Jaffe: ‘Two Portraits by Moroni: Puzzles and Solutions’, Arte lombarda, n. s., 122 (1998), pp. 31–5
Giovanni Battista Moroni: Renaissance Portraitist (exh. cat. by P. Humfrey and J. Bridgeman; Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, 2000)
G. Tiraboschi: ‘I Moroni di Albino: Andrea e Giovan Battista; Il contesto famigliare da cui emergono’, Atti dell’Ateneo di scienze, lettere ed arti di Bergamo, 64 (2000–01), pp. 21–46
Giovanni Battista Moroni: Il Cavaliere in nero; L’immagine del gentiluomo nel Cinquecento (exh. cat., ed. A. Zanni; Milan, Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 2005–6)
D. De Sarno Prignano: ‘I ritratti di Giovan Battista Moroni con breve cenno alle “affezioni”’, Capolavori in proscenio: Dipinti del Cinque, Sei e Settecento, ed. L. Muti (Faenza, 2006), pp. 8–25
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Last Updated8/7/24