This month, London's Royal Academy is presenting the amazing portraiture of Giovanni Battista Moroni in its coming exhibition of Renaissance painting, opening on the Twenty-Fifth of October.
Moroni’s remarkable advances were stepping stones in the development of naturalistic portraiture, paving the way for later artists such as Caravaggio, Ingres and Velázquez.
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Five things to remember about Moroni:
He was one of the greatest portraitists of 16th-century Italy, yet his naturalistic style was decades and even centuries ahead of its time. A contemporary of Titian, he anticipated the advances of Caravaggio and the 19th-century Realist movement.
He took portraiture to new levels of sophistication, reproducing not only the exact likeness of his sitters but also a tantalising spark of their inner life and character.
His paintings reflect the world and time in which he lived, from the glittering finery of Renaissance costume to the cultural changes that swept Europe during the highly charged era of the Counter-Reformation.
His painting, The Tailor, was revolutionary in portraying a manual worker as a gentleman, challenging established ideas of who should be depicted in art – and how.
He painted a broad spectrum of society, having found early favour amongst leading figures of the Bergamo aristocracy, before feuding drove him to return to his hometown. In his later years his work took on a more sombre and reflective quality.
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