The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art March 1971 [antikvár]

Two Portraits by Giovanni Battista Moroni One of the earliest artists to specialize in portraiture, Giovanni Battista Moroni (ca. 1520/25-1578) depicted the society of his native Bergamo with a directness and faithfulness unequaled in sixteenth-century art. His achievement lay in the field of draftsmanship. With only a few strokes of the brush he was able to seize the individuality of his subjects with penetrating realism. His portrayals mix flattery with satire. So renowned was his ability, Titian (ca.1480-1576) is reputed to have sent him clients.' Unlike Titian, Moroni spent his life away from the large metropolitan centers. He never went to Rome, Florence, or even nearby Venice. His sitters came mostly from Bergamo and the surrounding region and were from all walks of life—from members of the local aristocracy to lawyer, tailor, and school teacher. He did not travel from court to court painting monarchs and military heroes. He recorded ordinary people in their everyday dress. There is no attempt to imbue the figures with a sense of ideal beauty; no search for an "infinita bellez-za."2 Moroni's portraits show the sitter more as he was than as he wanted to be seen. The Cleveland Museum possesses two portraits by Moroni : a highly characteristic one of a man, Portrait of Vincenzo Guarignoni, and a less typical one of a man and woman, Portrait of a Gentleman and His Wife. The pur- Figure 1. Portrait of Vincenzo Guarignoni. Oil on canvas, 24-3/4 x 20 inches, dated 1572. Giovanni Battista Moroni, Italian, ca.1520/25-1578. Gift of Adele C. and Howard P. Eells, Jr., in memory of Howard Parmelee Eells. 62.1 The Bulletin of The Cleveland Museum of Art, Volume LVIII, Number 3, March 1971. Published monthly, except July and August, by The Cleveland Museum of Art, 11150 East Boulevard at University Circle, Cleveland, Ohio 44106. Subscription included in membership fee, otherwise $5.00 per year. Single copies, 60 cents. Copyright 1971, by The Cleveland Museum of Art. Second-class postage paid at Cleveland, Ohio. Museum photography by Nicholas Hlobeczy and John W. Cook; design by Merald E. Wrolstad. pose of the present article will be to discuss them in relation to some of Moroni's documented works and to show that while they date from different periods of his life, both are completely authentic works. The Portrait of Vincenzo Guarignoni (Fig. 1)3 represents a slightly balding man of forty-five in a black-velvet suit and white collar. Turned to the left, he gazes at the viewer with a gimlet eye; his lips are pursed, his eyebrows raised. The light which emanates from a source in front of the figure—not unlike a stage-light—throws the face into low relief. Soft and diffused, it models the features with delicacy. Highlighting the lips, cheeks, nose, and forehead are chalky tones of yellow and white, which energize the somber hues of brown, gray, and red. The canvas upon which the portrait was painted is especially coarse and grainy, and appears to have received the design with a minimum of priming; the pentimenti, or changes in the composition, are only thinly obscured. The line running down the sitter's left shoulder and around his ear would indicate that the position of his shoulders was once higher, and that his ear originally protruded farther to the right. The painting is in good condition. There are losses in the secondary areas, but the modeling of the face is intact. A glance at the photograph taken during restoration (Fig. 2) reveals the picture's state of preservation. The left side of the beard has been partially effaced, but the highlights and shadows around the nose, mouth, and eyes have maintained their original vigor. Among the parts of the painting that have suffered damage, the only one that does not seem to have received adequate restoration is the hairline; instead of covering the skull, it stops abruptly in the middle of the forehead. All the available evidence would indicate that it once continued another inch or so to the left. The date 1572, inscribed on the parapet across the bottom of the painting, places it among the artist's mature works. Bom in the early I520's, Moroni produced his first autograph works in the mid-1540's, but his mature portrait style did not evolve until ten years later. The first 75