Two households, both alike in dignity/ In fair Verona, where we lay our
scene/ From ancient grudge break to new mutiny/ Where civil blood makes
civil hands unclean.”
The first words of the prologue of Romeo and Juliet deftly fill in the
backstory of the tragedy we are about to see. In a provincial Italian city,
two noble families pursue a blood feud that will result in the murders of
kinsmen on both sides and ultimately to the exile of the hero and deaths of
the young lovers. The Montagues and the Capulets are fictional, but
murderous vendettas between noble families in the Renaissance certainly were
not. Shakespeare’s source for his play was the retelling in English of
Italian novellas published in the 1560s. But is it possible that the
novellas themselves were based on historical fact?
Giovanni Battista Moroni (c. 1520/24[1] – February 5, 1579) was a North Italian painter of the Late Renaissance period. He is also called Giambattista Moroni. Best known for his elegantly realistic portraits of the local nobility and clergy, he is considered one of the great portrait painters of sixteenth century Italy.
The question haunted me as I walked through the Royal Academy’s sublime
exhibition of the
16th century Italian master Giovanni Battista Moroni, the first ever held in
this country. If you know his work at all it is because around the 1570s he
painted one the nation’s favourite pictures, the famous portrait The Tailor
in the National Gallery.
What we learn in this show of 40 or so pictures is that startlingly lifelike
portrait wasn’t a one-off. Moroni was a so -so religious painter but when it
came portraiture he was a genius, an artist whose understanding of the
complexities of the human character I wouldn’t hesitate to compare to Shakespeare
in literature – and in art, only to Degas.
The son of an architect, Andrea Moroni, he trained under Alessandro Bonvicino "Il Moretto" in Brescia, where he was the main studio assistant in the 1540s, and worked in Trent
, 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.
, 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 Trent 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 his sons. There were nineteenth-century claims that he was trained by Titian at Trento; however, it is improbable 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. Moroni spent his life
in a part of Italy ruled by Spain. The intense naturalism of his painting
style – with strong contrasts of light and dark, unflinching naturalism and
diffused, silvery light owes something to the Spanish taste. But Bergamo is
also not too far from Venice, and though his presence there is not
documented, the way his brush caresses the textures of brocaded silk,
pastel-coloured feathers and lynx fur reminds us that he was the
contemporary of Titian and Veronese.
The politics of the region impinged directly on his life. Among his aristocratic clients in the city of Bergamo were the two leading families – the pro-Spanish Brembati, and the Albani, whose allegiance was to the Venetian Republic. A feud between the families caused by these political differences led to the murder in 1563 of Achille Brembati
by a son of the
Albani family. As head of the family Giovanni Gerolamo Albani went into
exile for five years. Perhaps tainted by his association with the Venetian
faction, Moroni returned to his home town of Albino.
In this show a full length portrait of Countess Lucia Albani hangs opposite that of Isotta Brembati,
two richly dressed and sensationally bejewelled
noblewomen seated in almost identical poses as though to suggest their
rivalry, painted in the mid-1550s. Other members of their respective
families are shown elsewhere in a gallery densely hung against dark walls to
suggest the interior of a marble palace and the men in particularly look
more than capable of taking on the roles of Tybalt or Mercutio. For all the
beauty of these pictures, the artist who painted them is still the courtier.
You don’t feel that he probes the characters of his sitters, or shows us
anything they did not wish us to see.
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 and 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.
but for whom Moroni painted portraits of his sons. There were nineteenth-century claims that he was trained by Titian at Trento; however, it is improbable 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. Moroni spent his life
in a part of Italy ruled by Spain. The intense naturalism of his painting
style – with strong contrasts of light and dark, unflinching naturalism and
diffused, silvery light owes something to the Spanish taste. But Bergamo is
also not too far from Venice, and though his presence there is not
documented, the way his brush caresses the textures of brocaded silk,
pastel-coloured feathers and lynx fur reminds us that he was the
contemporary of Titian and Veronese.
The politics of the region impinged directly on his life. Among his aristocratic clients in the city of Bergamo were the two leading families – the pro-Spanish Brembati, and the Albani, whose allegiance was to the Venetian Republic. A feud between the families caused by these political differences led to the murder in 1563 of Achille Brembati
by a son of the
Albani family. As head of the family Giovanni Gerolamo Albani went into
exile for five years. Perhaps tainted by his association with the Venetian
faction, Moroni returned to his home town of Albino.
In this show a full length portrait of Countess Lucia Albani hangs opposite that of Isotta Brembati,
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 and 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: "the exact truth of parts nowhere added up, in his altar pictures, even to the semblance of credibility," Freedberg has observed of their diagrammatic schemes borrowed from Moretto and 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 Academy 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.
S.J. 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.
That has changed by the last gallery when we come to the great portrait of Giovanni Gerolamo Albani painted around 1568-70, when the ferocious old man had returned from exile. With his white beard and black cloak lined with fur, he sits in an armchair, tense, scowling, and with his eyes cast slightly aside as though unwilling to look at us. Striking too is the bump in the middle of his forehead, a blemish that could easily have been concealed but that the artist chose to include, The heart of the show are the portraits Moroni painted in the 1550s and 1560s, when living again in Albino. These are the works I think of as Shakespearean in the way they look beneath the prepared and defended faces most sitters present to an artist, to find the strength of character in the determined Lucia Vertova Agosti, a slight smirk in the portrait of the Lateran Canon, or the simple affection of the friendly young magistrate who was clearly a personal friend of the painter. Here Moroni no longer shrinks from depicting the blemishes, wrinkles and even the sun-damaged skin of his sitters.
Why did it happen? One suggestion is that because he lived in a provincial society, there was a limit to the number of his aristocratic clients. He therefore turned to wealthy middle class sitters, (a Canon, a Tailor, a Magistrate) who were happy to let him show the world who they were and what they had achieved. When he returned to paint the portrait of an aristocrat in his wonderful head of a young lady of around 1575 her quizzical, appraising look is like nothing in art at this date – she is a living breathing person, a character we feel we know in the same way as we ‘know’ Juliet or her nurse.
That has changed by the last gallery when we come to the great portrait of Giovanni Gerolamo Albani painted around 1568-70, when the ferocious old man had returned from exile. With his white beard and black cloak lined with fur, he sits in an armchair, tense, scowling, and with his eyes cast slightly aside as though unwilling to look at us. Striking too is the bump in the middle of his forehead, a blemish that could easily have been concealed but that the artist chose to include, The heart of the show are the portraits Moroni painted in the 1550s and 1560s, when living again in Albino. These are the works I think of as Shakespearean in the way they look beneath the prepared and defended faces most sitters present to an artist, to find the strength of character in the determined Lucia Vertova Agosti, a slight smirk in the portrait of the Lateran Canon, or the simple affection of the friendly young magistrate who was clearly a personal friend of the painter. Here Moroni no longer shrinks from depicting the blemishes, wrinkles and even the sun-damaged skin of his sitters.
Why did it happen? One suggestion is that because he lived in a provincial society, there was a limit to the number of his aristocratic clients. He therefore turned to wealthy middle class sitters, (a Canon, a Tailor, a Magistrate) who were happy to let him show the world who they were and what they had achieved. When he returned to paint the portrait of an aristocrat in his wonderful head of a young lady of around 1575 her quizzical, appraising look is like nothing in art at this date – she is a living breathing person, a character we feel we know in the same way as we ‘know’ Juliet or her nurse.
The National Gallery (London) has one of the best collections of his work, including the celebrated portrait known as Il Sarto(The Tailor). Other portraits are found in the Uffizi (the Nobleman Pointing to Flame inscribed "Et quid volo nisi ut ardeat?"), Berlin Gallery, the Canon Ludovico de' Terzi and Moroni's self-portrait; and in the National Gallery, Washington, the seated half-figure of the Jesuit Ercole Tasso, traditionally called "Titian's Schoolmaster", although there is no real connection with Titian.
The Accademia Carrara (Bergamo) (Portrait of an old man). Ashmolean Museum (University of Oxford), Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis, Tennessee), Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the National Gallery, London,Pinacoteca Ambrosiana (Milan), Pinacoteca di Brera (Milan), Rijksmuseum, Studio Esseci (Padua, Italy), University of Arizona Museum of Art,
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