'', painting by Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1552-3,
Kunsthistorisches Museum '', painting by Giovanni Battista Moroni, 1570–1575,
National Gallery (London) Moroni was the son of architect Andrea Moroni. He trained under
Alessandro Bonvicino in
Brescia, where he was the main studio assistant during the 1540s, and worked in
Trento,
Bergamo and his home town of
Albino, near Bergamo, where he was born and died. His two short periods in Trento coincided with the first two sessions of the
Council of Trent, 1546–48 and 1551–53. On both occasions Moroni painted a number of religious works (including the altarpiece of the
Doctors of the Church for the church of
Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo) as well as the series of portraits for which he is remembered. During his stay in Trento he also made contact with
Titian and the Count-Bishop,
Cristoforo Madruzzo, whose own portrait is by Titian, but for whom Moroni painted portraits of Madruzzo's sons. There were nineteenth-century claims that he was trained by Titian at Trento, however, it is improbable that he ever ventured to the Venetian's studio for long, if at all. Moroni's period as the fashionable portraitist of Bergamo, nowhere documented but in the inscribed dates of his portraits, is unexpectedly condensed, spanning only the years ca. 1557–62, after which Bergamo was convulsed in internecine strife and Moroni retired permanently to Albino, (Rossi, Gregori et al.) where, in his provincial isolation, he was entirely overlooked by
Giorgio Vasari. His output at Bergamo, influenced in part by study of the realism of
Savoldo, produced in the few years a long series of portraits that, while not quite heroic, are full of dignified humanity and grounded in everyday life. The subjects are not drawn exclusively from the Bergamasque aristocracy, but from the newly self-aware class of scholars, professionals, and exemplary government bureaucrats, with a few soldiers, presented in detached and wary attitudes with Moroni's meticulous passages of still life and closer attention to textiles and clothing than to psychological penetration. His output of religious paintings, destined for a less sophisticated audience in the local sub-Alpine valleys, was smaller and less successful than his portraits: "the exact truth of parts nowhere added up, in his altar pictures, even to the semblance of credibility",
S. J. Freedberg has observed of their diagrammatic schemes borrowed from Moretto, Savoldo, and others. for example, he painted a
Last Supper for the parish at Romano in
Lombardy;
Coronation of the Virgin in
Sant'Alessandro della Croce, Bergamo; also for the cathedral of
Verona,
SS Peter and Paul, and in the
Brera of
Milan, the
Assumption of the Virgin. Moroni was engaged upon a
Last Judgment in the church of
Gorlago, when he died. Overall, his style in these paintings shows influences of his master,
Lorenzo Lotto, and
Girolamo Savoldo.
Giovanni Paolo Cavagna was an undistinguished pupil of Moroni, however, it is said that in following generations, his insightful portraiture influenced
Fra' Galgario and
Pietro Longhi. Freedberg notes that while his religious canvases are "archaic", recalling the additive compositions of the late Quattrocento and show stilted unemotive saints, his portraits are remarkable for their sophisticated psychological insight, dignified air, fluent control, and exquisite silvery tonality. Patrons for religious art were not interested in an individualized, expressive "Madonna", they desired numinous archetypal saints. On the other hand, patrons were interested in the animated portraiture. ==Public collections with works by Moroni==