The Tailor (Moroni)

Portraits of important persons and personages of Italy — merchants, aristocrats, and nobles — were the representational speciality of the artist Giovanni Battista Moroni, given that his influences included Tiziano and Lorenzo Lotto, and painterly tutelage under Moretto da Brescia.

It is not known who commissioned the painting; it is assumed that it was a representative of the Marinoni family of Desenzano al Serio who, having ceased his artistic activity some time before, had moved to Venice for trade.[2] Probably the same person, who is portrayed here elegantly dressed for the occasion, was not a tailor but a seller of pannine (wool fabric sold in pieces), in fact the painter depicts the gesture of cutting a fabric and not its packaging. The quality of the fabrics was very important in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It was certainly not possible for everyone to have clothes made with high quality woolen fabrics, therefore the pannine seller was certainly a person who, although not noble, enjoyed a certain economic comfort. It was Marco Boschini in his literary work La carta del navegar pittoresco who identified the painting with the tailoring activity.[3]

Moroni worked on many paintings of religious nature, but became more famous for his portraits. The Tailor is one of the works that best represents his art. Moroni was among the first painters to depict important people of the wealthy bourgeoisie, contrary to the custom of his time, which exclusively portrayed the financial or ecclesiastical aristocracy.

The painting depicts a young character, with a well-groomed unkempt beard, placed against a brown background, and elegantly dressed. He wears wide puffed trousers in the fashion of his time, a jacket called a doublet from which emerges a white gorget (pleated collar) similar to the cuffs protruding from the sleeves.

The tailor is depicted standing, looking slightly to one side, with scissors in his hand, concentrated on his work which he seems to interrupt because he is disturbed, recalled by someone, perhaps precisely the painter who is portraying him. He turns his gaze, rests the scissors on the surface of his work and in that moment and movement, the artist immortalizes the scene almost photographically. In the dignity of the movement and in the truthfulness of the image, in knowing how to represent the seriousness of the gaze of someone who carries out a job that is civil but which it is placed at the same level of intensity of thought and concentration of a literary activity, he brought the painting his deserving fame.[4][5]

The painting was originally owned by the Venetian Grimani family and passed from them to the Frizzonis in the 19th century, when it became part of the family's private collection in the Palazzo Frizzoni, now the town hall of Bergamo. It was bought in 1862 by Charles Lock Eastlake when he came to Italy to buy works of art for the National Gallery, in London, in the first years of its opening, where its still held.[6]

In 2008, The Tailor was displayed in the Museo del Prado, Madrid, in an exposition of Renaissance-era portraits. It returned to Bergamo in 2015 - 2016 to be displayed in a temporary exhibition at the Accademia Carrara.

• Olivar, M., Cien obras maestras de la pintura, Biblioteca Basica Salvat, 1971 (Spanish) ISBN 84-345-7215-X