Giovanni Battista Moroni

Moroni, Giambattista

Italian, c. 1525 - 1578

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Shown from the knees up, a light-skinned man wearing a loose, ink-black garment with a white collar leans back in a wooden chair in this vertical portrait painting. His body faces our left almost in profile, but he turns his head to look at us from the corners of his light hazel-brown eyes, the eyebrow closer to us slightly cocked. Crow’s feet line the corners of his hooded eyes. He is lit from our right so the side of his face to our left is in shadow. His slightly hollow cheeks are lined between his nose and mouth with wrinkles. His silvery-gray beard is trimmed close to his angled jawline and pointed chin. His gray hair is closely cropped hair under a velvety-black, three-pointed cap. The white collar is trimmed with stripes and a row of delicate dots along the edge. The man leans heavily against his left arm, closer to us, which is stretched along the arm of the chair to nearly span the width of the painting. That hand curls around the terminal of the chair, which is carved with a stylized flower in a disk. He wears a gold ring with a dark blue stone on the pinky of that hand. He marks the spot in a closed book with his other hand, and rests the book in the crook of the elbow draped along the arm of the chair. The book he holds has a sand-brown cover, and is about the size of a thick paperback novel. The crimson-red lining along the back of the chair, to our right, and the cushion on which the man sits is trimmed with rows of fringe of the same color. The background behind the man is deep, sable brown in the corners and lightens to tan around the man’s head.
Giovanni Battista Moroni, "Titian's Schoolmaster", c. 1575, oil on canvas, Widener Collection, 1942.9.45

"Titian's Schoolmaster"

Giovanni Battista Moroni · c. 1575 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1942.9.45

A man standing to our right with his hands together in prayer faces a woman holding a baby to our left in this vertical painting. All the people have pale skin. In the lower right quadrant of the painting, the man is shown from the chest up and is angled away from us so his profile faces our left. He has short, wavy brown hair, a bumped nose, flushed cheeks, and a faint goatee. He wears a black jacket with crimson-red sleeves. The high white collar and cuff of the hand we can see is decorated with a scrolling pattern in black. Slightly smaller in scale, the woman to our left is shown from the knees up. She wears a cherry-red dress under a cream-white mantle draped around her head and shoulders. A gold-edged, robin’s egg-blue drapery with a forest-green underside wraps around her middle and falls from the area of her waist. She stands with her body facing us and her head tilted to our right toward the baby in her arms. She looks up and to our left with brown eyes. She has brown hair, a straight nose, and her small pink lips are closed. Her head is encircled with a gold line indicating a halo. The baby she holds leans his head against her shoulder and looks off to our left, also with brown eyes. He has rounded cheeks and a chubby chest and arms. His midsection is wrapped with a white cloth, and he holds a yellow and red apple with his right hand, on our left. With his other hand, he holds the woman’s pointer finger. The scene takes place near the corner of a room with parchment-white walls.
Giovanni Battista Moroni, A Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna, c. 1560, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.114

A Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna

Giovanni Battista Moroni · c. 1560 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1939.1.114

A light-skinned man with dark hair and a russet-orange beard stands wearing a long, voluminous, fur-lined coat next to a small dog near the corner of a room in this vertical portrait painting. His body is angled to our right but he turns his head to look at us with light brown eyes under faint, ginger brows. He has a straight nose, his cheeks are lightly flushed, and his light peach lips are closed. His ginger beard and mustache are closely trimmed. His wavy, brown hair reaches his ears, and short bangs skim across the top of his forehead. His knee-length, taupe-brown tunic is tied at the waist and has a high neck that encircles layers of black and white collars underneath. The floor-length, flint-gray coat, worn over the tunic, has puffed sleeves that gather at the elbows, and is lined with a broad band of black fur around the neck and down the front. With his right hand, to our left, he grips the fur lining with his index finger extended. His other hand is held in front of his waist with the palm facing up and fingers loosely curled. He wears black pants or stockings over black shoes. The small, long-haired dog sitting to our right near the man’s feet has caramel-brown spots along its back, around its eyes, and over its furry ears. It looks at us with dark eyes, and its mouth curves up. It comes about halfway up the man’s shin and wears a red collar with silver bells. The floor is patterned with fern-green squares in a white grid. The wall behind the man is pale blue. Marble molding along the top is white veined with gray, and a red curtain is bunched up in the upper right corner of the painting, presumably tied against the wall there.
Giovanni Battista Moroni, Gian Federico Madruzzo, c. 1560, oil on canvas, Timken Collection, 1960.6.27

Gian Federico Madruzzo

Giovanni Battista Moroni · c. 1560 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1960.6.27