Lot 90: Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a black coat and hat

Giovanni Battista Moroni (Albino ?1520/24-1578?) Portrait of a gentleman, bust-length, in a black coat and hat oil on canvas 20 x 16½ in. (50.7 x 42 cm.)

Private collection, since 1890.

PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN COLLECTOR


This previously unrecorded canvas is a characteristic work of the only major cinquecento painter who was first and foremost a portraitist and whose enduring reputation is based almost exclusively on his achievement as such.

Born at Albino, near Bergamo, Giovanni Battista Moroni was strongly influenced by the Brescian Alessandro Bonvicino, Il Moretto, whom he assisted in the late 1540s. While aware of wider developments - Lotto had worked for Bergamasque patrons to spectacular effect and there was a major altarpiece by Titian at Brescia - Moroni's very consistency as a portraitist reflected his unquestioned dominance as the painter of Brescia, a rich town with a powerful landowning and mercantile élite. The sitter in this portrait evidently belonged in that very prosperous milieu. Partly because of its small dimensions, the picture may stand as an example of that directness of observation that distinguishes Moroni from his more courtly contemporaries and constitutes his most significant contribution to the tradition of realism in Lombard painting that a generation later would inspire the young Caravaggio.

While Moroni is justly celebrated for whole-lengths - the Gian Gerolamo Grumelli of 1566 (Bergamo, private collection; see M. Gregori, Giovanni Battista Moroni, Bergamo, 1979, no. 46) is perhaps the most spectacular - he also supplied numerous works of more intimate format, such as the present painting: these include two portraits of men at Siena (ibid., nos. 191-2), which measure 48 by 36 centimetres; one of a prelate in a private collection at Trent (ibid., no. 200) which measures 46 by 36 centimetres; the Liechtenstein Ecclesiastic at 45 by 37 centimetres (ibid., no. 202); the Portrait of a Nobleman, measuring 31.4 x 21.8 centimetres (excluding additions) that was sold in these Rooms, 7 July 2000, lot 85; and the Portrait of a Gentleman, sold Christie's, London, 8 December 2004, lot 80 (£419,000).