Giovan Battista Moroni was known for his penetrating realism, relying on naturalism in the depiction of features rather than on allegorical attributes and symbols. The artist might be said to record rather than interpret his sitters. Some of his best known portraits are of old men, usually three-quarter length, seated in a relaxed pose with head turned to face the viewer. The elderly subject of this painting sits in a wooden chair—a familiar prop used by Moroni throughout his career. This chair has a distinctive rose design carved at the ends of the arms, with brass studs and a bold orange trim at the back. The old man looks warily at the viewer.

John Pope-Hennessy noted that ‘direct lighting involves the corollary of shadows, and in portraits the use of the shadow is an evasion; it is not depiction but a refusal to depict.’[1] While the face of Moroni’s subject is wreathed in shadow, the artist has used shadow deliberately to draw attention to particular features, such as the man’s large nose, left ear and eyebrow; and the contrast highlights the whiteness of his beard. Moroni also used a slight cast shadow on the left of the seated man; and in the lower section of the canvas there is the suggestion that something, just outside the pictorial space, is casting another shadow behind the chair. Unlike many artists of this period Moroni did not shy away from the cast shadow, but appears to have used it more to vary the monotone of his favoured grey background.[2] Similarly, he often relied on coarsely woven canvases to create a textural component.

As is evident in this work, Moroni created distinctive silvery grey backgrounds to establish a sombre mood in paintings of his late period. Such a restriction of palette was a relatively new development in portraiture. Here Moroni applies this approach to draw attention to the man’s features by using quiet colours such as creamy flesh tones, the white beard and black jacket against a grey ground.

Although Moroni’s career spanned the same period as some great Renaissance portraitists such as Titian,[3] by working outside the large metropolitan centres of  Venice, Florence and Rome the artist was able to maintain a steady and profitable living. Specialising in subjects drawn from the society of his native area—Brescia, Bergamo, Albino and Trent—it is most likely that this sitter was a local gentleman of some note. The fur collar and cuffs of his voluminous black jacket and the gold signet ring suggest his wealth, while the cap hints at a scholarly occupation. He holds a book bound in vellum, possibly his journal. His tilted head and grasp on the volume, finger inserted between the pages, suggests that the viewer has interrupted his reading. One of the artist’s last known paintings, it has been posited that this is a portrait of the notary Giovan Battista Seradobati di Albino who was nominated in 1552 for the seat of Albino.[4] The simplicity of Moroni’s setting, however, precludes any certainty.

Simeran Maxwell

[1]John Pope-Hennessy, The portrait in the Renaissance, London: Phaidon Press, 1966, p. 138.

[2]E.H. Gombrich, Shadows: The depiction of cast shadows in Western art, London: National Gallery Publications, 1995, p. 19.

[3]Titian (1488/1490–1576).

[4]www.accademiacarrara.bergamo.it, Catalogo dei dipinti esposti, Accademia Carrara, viewed 30 August 2011.