A Gentleman in Adoration before the Madonna

c. 1560

Giovanni Battista Moroni

Artist, Italian, c. 1525 - 1578

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.

Media Options

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On View

West Building Main Floor, Gallery 22

Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Samuel H. Kress Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 59.7 × 64.8 cm (23 1/2 × 25 1/2 in.)
    framed: 80.01 × 85.41 × 7.62 cm (31 1/2 × 33 5/8 × 3 in.)

  • Accession

    1939.1.114

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Possibly Generale Conte Teodoro Lechi [1778-1866], Brescia, Italy.[1] Casa Grimani, Venice. (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi, Florence and Rome); sold 1932 to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, New York;[2] gift 1939 to NGA.
[1] Recorded as item 274 the inventory of the Lechi family, published by Fausto Lechi, I quadri delle collezioni Lechi in Brescia, Florence, 1968: 204.
[2] According to Kress records in NGA curatorial files. See also The Kress Collection Digital Archive, https://kress.nga.gov/Detail/objects/44.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1935

  • L'Art Italien de Cimabue à Tiepolo, Petit Palais, Paris, 1935, no. 322

1939

  • Masterpieces of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture from 1300-1800, New York World's Fair, 1939, no. 258.

1996

  • Obras Maestras de la National Gallery of Art de Washington, Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico City, 1996-1997, unnumbered catalogue, 60-61, color repro.

2000

  • Giovanni Battista Moroni: Renaissance Portraitist, Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, 2000, no. 4, repro., as Portrait of a Man before the Virgin and Child.

2014

  • Giovanni Battista Moroni, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2014-2015, no. 8, repro., as Gentleman in Contemplation before the Madonna and Child.

2019

  • Moroni: The Riches of Renaissance Portraiture, The Frick Collection, New York, 2019.

Bibliography

1935

  • Tietze, Hans. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935: 96, repro. (English ed., Masterpieces of European Painting in America. New York, 1939: 96, repro.).

1941

  • Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 137, no. 225.

1942

  • Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 244, repro. 156.

1944

  • Frankfurter, Alfred M. The Kress Collection in the National Gallery. New York, 1944: 54, repro.

1945

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1945 (reprinted 1947, 1949): 132, repro.

1959

  • Paintings and Sculpture from the Samuel H. Kress Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1959: 199, repro.

1963

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. New York, 1963 (reprinted 1964 in French, German, and Spanish): 156, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 95.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 83, repro.

  • Berenson, Bernard. Italian Pictures of the Renaissance. Central Italian and North Italian Schools. 3 vols. London, 1968: 1:288.

1973

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Collection: Italian Schools, XVI-XVIII Century. London, 1973: 32, fig. 63.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 250, repro.

1979

  • Shapley, Fern Rusk. Catalogue of the Italian Paintings. 2 vols. Washington, 1979:1I:337-338; 2:pl. 246.

  • Watson, Ross. The National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1979: 44, pl. 27.

1984

  • Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 220, no. 273, color repro.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 288, repro.

2012

  • Schwartz, Sanford. “The Moment of Moroni.” New York Review of Books 59, no. 13 (August 16, 2012): 16.

Wikidata ID

Q20176625

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