Finally managed to shift the writing block, at least for the
moment….
This was done by going to the Royal Academy show devoted to
Giovanni Battista Moroni (upstairs and a bit hidden away by comparison with the
huge- in every sense of the world- Anselm Kiefer exhibition in the main
galleries which, I’m afraid, simply did nothing for me). It’s not huge- only about 45 paintings- but
well worth a visit. It’s also
surprisingly easy to put together in London because it seems that there are
more Moronis in British collections than there are anywhere else in the world
apart from Bergamo. For a variety of
rather complex reasons (some of them actually derived from misattributions) his
work became fashionable in England in the early decades of the seventeenth
century- Charles I, always a better art critic than he was at being a monarch,
was a fan- and underwent a second period in vogue in the mid-nineteenth. As a result some of his most iconic works
live in the National Gallery and just had to make a short journey down
Piccadilly to join the exhibition. Others however have emerged from private
collections or from parish churches in northern Italy so this isn’t a case of
repackaging mostly familiar works and charging people to see them again.
On one level Moroni lived a pretty uneventful life. His artistic career however was side-swiped
on a couple of occasions by external events which affected his art. He was born in Albino, a small town on the
Alpine fringes of the Lombard plain near Bergamo, around 1520. He joined the workshop of Moretto in Brescia
in the 1540’s. Moretto was a good
choice as he was well regarded by contemporaries (he gets a favourable review
from Vasari, who wasn’t overly generous to non-Florentine artists and completely
missed Moroni) and well conencted.
Although their shared homeland is now part of Lombardy in contemporary
Italian administrative terms, in the mid sixteenth century (and indeed until
1797) it was the far west of the territory under the rule of the Venetian
Republic. As such it bordered on the
Duchy of Milan, which was finally under Spanish control after years of warfare
across northern Italy, though this control was only definitively consolidated
as late as 1559. The Venice/Milan border wasn’t exactly a “hot” one by the time
Moroni was making an independent career for himself but relations between
Venice and the Spanish monarchy were often tense. Venice was the only major Italian state
which wasn’t either ruled directly by Spain or closely tied to Spanish
interests in the mid and later sixteenth century and its ruling oligarchy were
deeply concerned that Spain might try to turn it into a satellite state or seek
to peel away chunks of its mainland territories. Venetian rule over a city like Bergamo was
mostly indirect. There was a Venetian
Governor but to a very considerable extent the local elites who had dominated the
city before it submitted to Venice still ran the show- subject to a general
Venetian override power.
Despite the political links to Venice and even though it’s
clear that Moroni knew of the works of his major Venetian contemporaries like
Titian (and vice versa) it’s by no means certain that he ever set foot
there. Indeed he doesn’t appear to have
travelled very much during his life. The
most important journeys he made were to the city of Trento (then an independent
Prince-Bishopric) where he undertook commissions linked to the episcopal
household in the 1540’s and 50’s. Trento
at that point was of course primarily noted as the venue for the first and
second sessions of the Council of Trent, where the leading lights of the Roman
Catholic Church sought to work out how to respond to the challenge of the
Protestant Reformation. One element of
this concerned how religious subjects ought to be depicted in art, which does
seem to have marked Moroni’s approach to commissions to produce religious
art. The first side-swipe to his career
came about here. The Bishop of Bergamo,
Vettore Soranzo , was a member of a group of would-be reformers known as the Spirituali who (simplifying grossly)promoted
a simplified and inward-directed style of piety and hoped to find a compromise
way forward which would enable the bulk of the church to reunite round a
reformed Catholicism. They came within
touching distance of winning the upper hand in the church when their informal
leader, the English Cardinal Reginald Pole, came within one vote of being
elected Pope but the ride turned against them and and by the 1550’s even very
senior members of the group were at serious risk of being burned as
heretics. Bishop Soranzo spent
years under investigation. The side
–swipe to Moroni came about because religious commissions to him from Bergamo
institutions almost dried up for years, until late in his life. It’s not made entirely clear in the
exhibition catalogue whether this was a general phenomenon, with only a handful
of well-placed religious institutions prepared to risk commissioning anything
while the rules were up in the air and the local bishop out of favour, or
whether Moroni’s links to the bishop of Trento meant that he was deemed guilty
by association of the popular Soranzo’s misfortunes and frozen out of the local
market. Either way Moroni was deprived
of a core income source of any Italian
Renaissance artist. Whether this was an altogether bad thing is
another matter- Moroni’s religious art is competent rather than inspired. He was always a far better portraitist so
being obliged to seek commissions in that area was probably no bad thing.
The other side-swipe came in the 1560’s, when Moroni was
well established in Bergamo and producing portraits of the local elites; though
he did paint the occasional top rank figure (a Spanish governor of Milan, for
instance) his core aristocratic audience was mostly composed of people who were
basically local celebrities rather than people with an Italy-wide renown, a
factor which led to lots of misidentifications and misattributions of Moroni’s
paintings in subsequent generations.
The problem was that Bergamo was the stage for an increasingly violent
feud between the Albani and Brembati families and their associates which
culminated in a Brembati being hacked to death in a Bergamo church in 1563. This kind of noble feuding was common enough
across sixteenth century Europe but a killing on consecrated ground was going
over the top- especially in a sensitive border area. The Venetian authorities therefore came down
hard on the entire pro-Spanish local elite, with a slew of condemnations to
prison and sentences of exile aimed at key figures on both sides. Moroni’s client base in Bergamo was shot out
from under him. He had to retreat to his
home town of Albano and try to rebuild a career there.
He was clearly respected there; he served as a town
councillor, for instance, and some of his old clients eventually came back once
they’d served their terms in exile. He
was however obliged to descend the social hierarchy a notch to get enough work
to keep his practice going- meaning, amongst other things that he had to
simplify some aspects of his work to keep the costs down. This turned out to be a positive thing
artistically. It means however that the
identity of the sitters is even more obscure and open to debate. Just how far this new clientele paid the rent
is a bit unclear, at least from the documentation surrounding the RA show. It may be significant that Moroni began
doing more religious art late in his life.
There was a new bishop in Bergamo and the whole region under the
ecclesiastical control of the Archbishopric of Milan was a hive of rebuilding
and redecorating activity in the 1570’s under the impetus of visitations by the
Archbishop, Carlo Borromeo, later to be canonised on the strength of his work
as a model bishop in the post-Council of Trent mould. Lots of churches needed to replace art which
didn’t fit Tridentine models; I wrote a bit about this when talking about the
National Gallery’s Veronese show so I won’t repeat it here. Moroni had plenty to do and the exhibition
catalogue even suggests that the sheer weight of work he took on undermined his
health and contributed to his death around 1580.
What makes Moroni’s portraits special? Even in his lifetime he was recognised as
exceptionally talented at getting a true likeness of his subjects. This wasn’t always seen as an entirely
positive thing. Titian is supposed to
have made some rather ambiguous remarks about this skill which imply that this
realism was fine for the second tier people Moroni was painting in his Bergamo
heyday but hardly appropriate for the kings and Doges and Popes whom Titian
painted, for whom a much grander style reflecting their office as much as their
individual personality was required.
The striking thing about Moroni’s artistocrats, however, is precisely that Moroni
manages to paint them as individuals with a clear sense of a personality while
also managing to be flattering enough in other ways to retain their custom.
Take Gian Gerolamo Grumelli, for instance (see above). It’s pretty clear that we’re dealing with a
man with a notably high opinion of himself, with a gaze which implies that
you’re better have a very good reason for distracting him and looking him in
the eye rather than bowing low to him.
He isn’t likely to be entirely comfortable company as he stalks along
the slightly crumbling portico which figures in so many of Moroni’s portraits
of the 1560’s. He’s dressed in the
height of fashion in a spectacular coral pink outfit (the colour is a nod to
the Grumelli coat of arms)- an intensely masculine colour in the sixteenth
century. The surroundings, however,
hint at another side to the man; the fragments of classical statuary point to
his interest in art and classical literature.
He may be a peacock and a bit of a fashion victim but he’s a man of culture.
Moroni has also painted his wife, Isotta Brembati (below) a
few years earlier (before they married, so the portraits aren’t a matched
pair). Isotta certainly was a lady of
culture; she was a published poet, for instance. There’s no indication of her intellectual
interests here, though. She’s
gorgeously dressed (Moroni loved the fabrics his sitters wore) and the sable
she’s wearing round her neck worked into a kind of scarf clearly didn’t come
cheap. Nor did the ostrich feather fan
she holds. She’s a living demonstration
of her household’s wealth and status and a woman in full command of the
situation- Moroni has seated her in a pose normally used for very senior male figures- but
seemingly a little uneasy. Perhaps
she’d rather have been painted with some of her books, perhaps she’s worried
that the cook misunderstood her instructions over dinner- we can only guess. Or perhaps Moroni just wasn’t terribly good
company as she had to hold the pose for hours on end; though he painted some
very characterful old ladies, his female subjects are generally less convincing
than their male counterparts and some
modern critics have speculated that he may have been gay.
Not all Moroni’s aristocrats were so overtly cultured. Faustino Avogadro’s Albani wife may have
been as cultured as Isotta but Moroni’s portrait of him below emphasises the
warrior, or at least the fighter, in him.
He’s still wearing some of his jousting kit and his tournament armour is
strewn on the ground (which doesn’t say much for his support crew- armour of that
quality cost plenty and needed careful maintenance) while he rests his arm on a
gorgeously plumed helmet. The eye
however is drawn to the brace on his left leg, which perhaps slightly undercuts
the martial image (the painting was for many years known as ”The Knight with the Wounded Foot”). It’s now thought that Avogadro wore this all
the time because of a congenital weakness in his ankle ligaments- which leaves me
wondering just how effective a jouster he actually was, especially in those
elements of tournaments which were fought out on foot. There is a slightly louche aspect to his
expression; is he actually a bit of a wannabe, only playing at being a serious
competitor in knightly sports? Whatever
the seriousness of his disability, it didn’t stop him being one of those who
slashed and hacked the Brembati to death in church. He fled Bergamo and was ingloriously dead
within a year, falling down a well in Ferrara when hopelessly drunk- a sad end
for Moroni’s jaunty sportsman.
The local Venetian Governor, Antionio Navagero, looks
surprisingly friendly and affable below given that Bergamo can’t have been the
easiest posting in the mid 1560’s- though these is a slightly world-weary air
to his gaze. It’s not clear whether he’s
just received the sealed letter he holds or is about to hand it over for onward
delivery; if the former, it might be the latest denunciation of a local trouble
maker to the authorities, meaning more difficult work for him. He obviously did a good job during his years
in Bergamo, or at least managed the various interest groups successfully as he
was given a notably positive write up in local chronicles. The striking feature of his portrait,
however, is the huge and very visible codpiece he’s wearing. Presumably this is a power statement along
with his furred gown and red costume; one wonders if there are more subtle
messages about the man encoded here….
In his later Albano years Moroni tended to simplify his
portraits. It’s possible that, as I
suggested above, this was a simple response to more difficult trading
conditions and a less affluent clientele who weren’t seeking ways to work coded
references to their family mottos and heraldic devices into the art. It may also be that Moroni himself became
more and more focused on his sitters and inclined to strip away superfluous
background detail. Instead of standing
in front of complex classicising architecture, his subjects now look out from a
monochrome background. In many cases, they look round at us over a
shoulder or at an angle, as if interrupted in the middle of something. The elderly man at the top of this piece,
possibly the writer Pietro Spino, has evidently been interrupted in the middle
of reading and marks his place with his finger, hoping the disturbance won’t last too long. Given his fur lined clothes and his hat, it
must be a cold day. There is a certain
weary patience and wisdom in his gaze, but one senses that he wants to get back
to his reading as soon as possible; there is so little time left for scholarship
and he wants to make the maximum use of his remaining days. As someone who loves reading and isn’t young
any more, I find it rather affecting on a personal level.
Not all his Albano sitters were lower status. Some of his old clients came back once
they’d done their time. Gian Girolamo
Albani, patriarch of the Albani clan, is a study in black and white well before
Whistler came up with the idea. Again
he appears to have been interrupted in mid-read but one doesn’t have the sense
that this is quite so important to him.
He sits frontally- we’re having a formal audience with him rather than
just dropping in. He looks stern, one senses
that five years of enforced exile on a remote island off the Dalmatian coast
and dismissal from the various administrative offices he had held in the
Venetian administration hasn’t done much to improve the temper of a man who
always had a short fuse. He’s still a
man to be reckoned with and not without influence, as his finery shows, and you
certainly wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. Maybe he’s about to make an offer you can’t
refuse, maybe he just wants to vent about how shabbily he’s been treated. As it happened, life was about to take a
very strange turn for him; an old family friend was elected Pope and Pius V
appointed this most improbable clergyman (he eventually took orders after his
wife’s death) a cardinal. Sometimes God
really did move in mysterious ways…..
Perhaps the most famous portrait from this period, and the
one which arguably most challenged conventions about who qualified for a formal
portrait, is below. It’s generally known
as “The Tailor” for fairly obvious reasons.
A stylishly dressed man looks up at the viewer in a rather appraising
way, as if pondering whether his visitor is a credible future client. He holds a pair of large scissors in his
right hand; on the table in front of him lies a piece of presumably high
quality black cloth no doubt about to undergo cutting to shape. A huge amount of ink has apparently been
spilled on whether the subject of this painting is in fact a producer of
bespoke gents suiting, mostly on the assumption that a tailor wouldn’t have
been able to afford to commission Moroni to take his likeness and, as a mere mechanical
craftsman, even if he did have the money he would have wanted to hide his
source of income and look like a member of the leisured elite. Is he perhaps a nobleman either fallen on
hard times or with an unusual hobby?
None of this strikes me as particularly persuasive. A man at the very top of the tailoring
profession would have been making decent money (assuming his clients paid up-
the stereotype of the gent not paying his tailor goes back a long way) and
would obviously have dressed well as an advertisement for his own skills. He handled expensive materials and had to
create something which pleased his clients, conformed to wider social
expectations but also had an element if individual style- not unlike a
sixteenth century painter, in fact. Tradesmen
like goldsmiths and jewellers were regularly depicted in art by Moroni’s day; in
treating this skilled craftsman as in some senses an artistic peer and showing
him about his daily business, Moroni was perhaps extending definitions of
gentility rather than radically subverting them.
