Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Moretto Da Brescia, Portrait of a Young Man, (Count Fortunato Martinengo Cesaresco?), 1542


< equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">Moretto Da Brescia, Portrait of a Young Man, (Count Fortunato Martinengo Cesaresco?), 1542

Relevant Course Articles:

Wilson The Renaissance Portrait: From Resemblance to Representation

Castiglione The First Book: To Messer Alfonso Arisoto

Paula Findlen Introduction and a World of Wonders in One Closet Shut

Notes:

  • The sitter is probably Fortunato Martinengo Cesaresco, a scholarly nobleman of Brescia. The painting may date from 1542 when he married. Rare ancient coins and the bronze foot suggest the interests of a scholarly collector and were also fit subjects for melancholy reflection. 'Alas, I desire too much' is written in Greek upon his cap badge.
  • 114 x 94 cm
  • Alessandro Bonvicino (called Moretto) was, with Romanino, the leading painter of Brescia in the early 16th century, when the town became part of the Venetian empire. Moretto's work was strongly influenced by Giorgione and Titian, and he may have trained in Titian's studio, though he retained much of the naturalism associated with painting in Lombardy in the 16th century.
  • The majority of Moretto's paintings are large-scale canvases painted for religious foundations in and around Brescia. Portraits by him are rarer, though he excelled in portraiture, passing on his skills to his most famous pupil, Moroni.

1 comment:

  1. - worked with many portraits of psychological observation
    - flamboyantly dressed, obviously wealthy noble
    - brocade curtain, ornamented with pomegranate and carnation designs
    - was standing, not sitting
    - pose and gesture significant of the melancholic contextualization of the ascendant bourgeoisie
    - spoke about the lack of spiritual riches, not material things: linked to the melancholic phase
    - also links to Durer's engraving, which embodies the melancholic gesture with the hand on the cheek
    - very humanist and theorist expression through this idea of melancholy -- something only the wealthy would have been able to contemplate

    George

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