_Moroni_ (Bergamese: 1525-1578).
Giambattista Moroni is one of the greatest of the Italian
portrait-painters, and this picture is perhaps his best-known
and most popular production.[169] The works of Moroni appeal
alike to the general public and to the painter. He gave to
his figures a vitality and ease, and impressed upon them a
verisimilitude which appeal to every spectator. His works (adds
Sir F. Burton) "will always be highly estimated by the painter,
as they exhibit rare technical merits, perfect knowledge and
command of means, facility of execution without display of
dexterity, truth of colour, and the finest perception of the
value of tones." "No portrait-painter ever placed the epidermis
of the human face upon canvas with more fidelity, and with
greater truth than Moroni: his portraits have all a more or
less prosaic look, but they must all have had that startling
likeness to the original which so enchants the great public,
who exclaim 'The very man! just how he looks!' And it was
with the eyes of the great public that Moroni did look at his
subjects; he was not a poet in the true sense of the word,
but a consummate painter. Yet, now and then, he manages to
go beyond himself, and to pierce the surface till he reaches
the soul of the sitter. In such cases his portraits may rank
with those of Titian" (Morelli's _German Galleries_, p. 48).
His colouring varied at different periods of his life. For
examples of his manner before he came under Il Moretto's
influence see 1023 and 1316--the reddish hue of his flesh-tints
being characteristic. In his second period he adopted the
"silvery" manner of Il Moretto: seen here and in 1022; whilst
for his third, or naturalistic manner see 742. Moroni is a
distinguished ornament of the school of Bergamo--a provincial
school characterised, says Morelli, by "manly energy," but
also by "a certain prosaic want of refinement." See, for
other Bergamese painters, Previtali (695) and Cariani (1203).
Palma Vecchio, the greatest of them, is represented by the
"Portrait of Ariosto," 636. Giambattista Moroni was a painter
without honour in his own country, and when people from Bergamo
came to Titian to be painted, he used to refer them to their
own countryman--no better face painter, he would tell them,
existed. Moroni is believed to have entered the studio of
Moretto at Brescia when fifteen years of age. His religious
pictures are inferior reflections of his master's. Upon one
of them, still preserved in the church of Gorlago (between
Bergamo and Brescia) he was engaged at the time of his death.
No admirer of Moroni should omit to visit Bergamo: a splendid
series of his portraits is to be seen in the Carrara gallery
of that town. There too, as also in the gallery at Verona, is
a pretty portrait by him of a little girl.
A "speaking portrait." "The tailor's picture is so well done," says an
old Italian critic, "that it speaks better than an advocate could." A
portrait that enables one, moreover, to realise what was once meant
by a "worshipful company of merchant tailors." Tagliapanni--for such
is his name--is no Alton Locke--- no discontented "tailor and poet";
neither is he like some fashionable West-End tailor, with ambitions of
rising above his work. He is well-to-do--notice his handsome ring; but
he has the shears in his hands. He does the work himself, and he likes
the work. He is something of an artist, it would seem, in clothes: his
jacket and handsome breeches were a piece of his work, one may suppose;
and the artist has caught and immortalised him, as he is standing back
for a minute to calculate the effect of his next cut.