Franz von Lenbach’s portrait of his friend Giovanni Morelli presents him at the age of seventy in his role as Italian Senator. Lenbach and Morelli had known one another for many years and frequently met at the court of the Prussian royal family, for Morelli was a friend and adviser to Victoria Adelaide Maria, Empress of Germany.

To portray the grand Italian politician Lenbach appropriated a formal three-quarter length pose based on Venetian paintings by Titian and Tintoretto.[1] The portrait was executed in the artist’s studio at the Palazzo Borghese, Rome, and is described in Morelli’s letters to Jean Paul Richter.[2] On 29 April 1885 Morelli records that he began sitting for the genial Lenbach. By 7 June 1885 the portrait was nearly complete, the resemblance judged convincing. Morelli remarked ironically that Lenbach had shown considerable pleasure in rendering his nose. Indeed it is very prominent. Informal photographs of Morelli from the same time show a more relaxed bohemian figure, wearing crumpled suits, smiling and at home in his bachelor pad in Milan.

Morelli invented connoisseurship for the modern period by devising a scientific method of attribution for Renaissance works of art. The Morellian method, as it was known, was extremely successful and involved the comparison of characteristic details between painters and paintings. His many followers included Bernard Berenson. His writings were first published in German under the pseudonym Lermolieff,[3] and later in English translation.[4] In the context of this exhibition he is important both as a connoisseur and a collector. From 1866 to 1872 he formed a collection for his Swiss cousin, Giovanni Melli, which he later inherited and in turn bequeathed to the Accademia Carrara.[5] Some of Morelli’s treasures are in the exhibition, including the remarkable Bellini Alzano Madonna and Botticelli’s Virginia (cats 35, 40).

Morelli was born in Verona in 1816; he died in Milan in 1891. He came from a Swiss Waldensian (Protestant) family; his mother, a member of the Zavaritt family, was born in Bergamo. He was a patriot who fought bravely in the battles of 1848 and 1866. In 1861 he was elected to the first national Italian Parliament of a united Italy, the representative for Bergamo.

In the 1850s and 1860s Italian patriots were concerned with how the national patrimony should be defined. Before and after Unification in 1861 there was a healthy debate about how Renaissance art should be displayed, which museums should be created from what sources, and about the nature of scientific restoration. The Morellian method was invented to define and preserve the Renaissance past. In the twenty-first century it may seem old fashioned when compared to modern scientific analysis, but Morelli had an enviable ability to proclaim attributions that became canonical with time.

Franz von Lenbach was the most celebrated portrait painter of the second half of the nineteenth century in Germany and Italy, as shown by the collection at the artist’s house in Munich,[6] especially his portraits of the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck that Morelli much admired.

Jaynie Anderson

[1] Titian (1488/1490–1576); Jacopo Tintoretto (1582–1587).

[2] Morelli’s comments on the portrait are in I. and G. Richter (eds), Italienische Malerei der Renaissance im Briefwechsel von Giovanni Morelli und Jean Paul Richter 1876–1891, Baden Baden: Bruno Grimm, 1960, pp. 398, 412–13.

[3] Morelli’s articles under the pseudonym Lermolieff were first published in Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst, 1874–1876.

[4] Giovanni Morelli, Italian masters in German galleries, Louise M. Richter (trans.), London, 1883; Italian painters: Critical studies of their works by Giovanni Morelli, London: John Murray, 1892–1893.

[5] Jaynie Anderson, Collecting, connoisseurship and the art market in Risorgimento Italy. Giovanni Morelli’s letters to Giovanni Melli and Pietro Zavaritt (1866–1872), Venice: Istituto Veneto, 1999.

[6] Lenbach’s house in Munich is a museum, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München.