Giovanni Battista Moroni, Lucia Albani Avogrado, called La Dama in Rosso (The Lady in Red) (ca. 1554-57), oil on canvas, 61 x 42″; courtesy The National Gallery, London
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The following article was originally published in the May 23, 2012 edition of City Arts and is posted here on the occasion of “Moroni: The Riches of Renaissance Portraiture”, an exhibition currently on display at The Frick Collection. My review of the Frick show will appear in an upcoming issue of The New Criterion.
Blink during your next visit to the Met and you’re likely to miss Bellini, Titian, And Lotto; North Italian Paintings from the Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, an exhibition snuggled almost imperceptibly into the museum’s collection of European art. As the Accademia Carrara undergoes renovation, the Met is hosting fifteen of its paintings as a means to “expand [the Accademia’s] reputation internationally.”
The last time the Met and the Accademia Carrera joined forces was with a revelatory exhibition of still-life paintings by local hero Evaristo Baschenis (1617-1677). The current venture doesn’t pack the same punch. The star names might lead you to believe otherwise, but the lone Titian canvas is, at best, a curio and–what’s that again?–an attribution. Bellini’s Pieta With The Virgin and Saint John (ca. 1455-60) is–well, it’s a dud. Compare it to the Met’s own Madonna and Child (ca. 1480) and weep.
Lotto justifies marquee billing. Three altarpiece panels originally installed in the Church of San Bartolomeo evince a showman of impeccable concision, if not at the top of his powers. That distinction is earned with Portrait of Lucina Brembati (1518-23), wherein Lotto adroitly concentrates his knack for rendering finery and tapping into the psyche. The more time you spend with Ms. Brembati, the more intimate, and unnerving, the encounter. Wow, you think–the things a painting can do.
The same sentiment can be applied to canvases by Giovanni Battista Moroni, a lesser-known “natural talent” whose gift for portraiture won Titian’s recommendation. Moroni’s Portrait of a Little Girl of the Redetti Family (ca. 1570) is a remarkable evocation (or illusion) of a child wiser than her years. But Portrait of a Twenty-nine-year-old Man (1567) is the triumph, the sitter’s wary individuality having been distilled with no consequent loss in mystery.
The remainder of Bellini, Titian and Lotto is filled out with drab talents (Bergognone), by-the-book tradesmen (Giovanni Cariani) and flashy pasticheurs (Andrea Previtali). On the slim evidence at hand, it’s difficult to know whether Vincenzo Foppa or Moretto Da Brescia are more than that. Is Da Brescia’s Christ and a Devotee (1518) a happy one-off or does it herald a minor master? The Met and the Accademia Carrara should join forces again to answer that question for the rest of us.
© 2012 Mario Naves
Too Much Art 