Although the two inscriptions look too crude to be autograph, they probably date from soon after the execution of the picture, and there is no reason to question the validity of the information they provide. Without identifying the sitter directly, they confirm that he was a writer, and imply that he had already died before Moroni painted the portrait in 1562. When it was in the collection of Count Zanchi in the late eighteenth century, the sitter was mistakenly identified as the owner’s ancestor, Giovanni Crisostomo Zanchi, who did not die until 1566. Only in 1979 was the sitter’s correct identity correctly established, on the basis of a medal struck in 1561, as the Bergamask humanist and poet Giovanni Bressani, who had died the previous year.

Giovanni Bressani (1489/90-1560) was the dominant literary figure in sixteenth-century Bergamo, and his prolific output included thousands of verses in Latin, Italian and local dialect, as well as novella and other prose works. He was the friend and mentor of other local poet, including the noblewoman Isotta Brembate and Lucia Albani, both of whose portraits had been painted by Moroni. When he died the members of his literary circle collaborated to produce a collection of funerary verses in his honour; presumably both the portrait model of 1561, signed by the otherwise little known medallist Arsensio, and the present portrait painted by Moroni, were similarly commissioned as posthumous tributes by the same group of friends, pupils and admirers.

The compositional formula used for this portrait is based on one that Moroni had devised some two years previously for another man of letters, the so called Portrait of a Magistrate of 1560, and he was frequently to adapt it throughout the 1560’s and early 1570’s, especially for representations of soberly clad men of contemplation. Bressani is shown in three quarter length, seated on a chair placed at right angles to the picture plane, and turning his head to meet the eyes of the spectator. As in the Portrait of a Magistrate, the colour range is characteristically cool and restrained, and consists essentially of blacks, whites and subtly moderated greys. Apart from the telling touch of coral pink in the fringes on the chair back, these muted tones are enlivened simply by the ivories of the book bindings and the flesh, and by the olive-green of the table cloth. But the pose and expression are rather less spontaneous than in the Portrait of a Magistrate, and much less so than in later examples of the type, such as the celebrated Titian’s Schoolmaster of about 1570 (National Gallery of Art, Washington). The figure of Bressani is also smaller in relation to the picture field than in these other portraits, and much greater emphasis is given to the still-life detail, in a way that recalls the Netherlandish tradition of representing scholars in their studies.

The objects on the table include a bronze inkwell in the form of a foot, of a type inspired by ancient Roman lamps, and a container for sand with which to dry the ink, in addition to the plenitude of books and papers. While obviously appropriate to Bressani’s profession, these objects push the sitter back into the space, making him more remote, and further reducing the effect of psychological immediacy that is usually so pronounced in Moroni’s portraits. It is as if the painter, which aiming to provide Bressani’s friends with a vivid likeness with which to remember him, also wished to create an effect of repose and distance appropriate to a posthumous image.

This text was first published in The Age of Titian: Venetian Renaissance Art From Scottish Collections (2004).