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THE WORKS

The "Mystical Wedding of Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Niccolò Bonghi", coming from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, bears the artist's signature and the date 1523 on the wooden footstool, and is perhaps one of the most famous works carried out by Lorenzo Lotto for private clients, during his Bergamo period. The merchant Niccolò Bonghi commissioned the work and inserted it into the composition with great originality. Bonghi was the owner of the house where Lotto lived: in exchange for paying a year's rent, he had asked the artist to paint this painting. The illustrated scene is that of the mystical wedding of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a sacred episode during which baby Jesus, with a ceremonial gesture, puts the ring on the ring finger of the young princess, symbolically making her his bride. It is said that the upper part of the painting was mutilated by a French soldier: a gray rectangular surface was placed to replace what must have been a window probably opening onto a landscape with Mount Sinai. Only a doorframe and a windowsill remain of it from which two oriental carpets hang. The canvas is emblematic of Lorenzo Lotto's eccentric personality: the artist's typical disharmonies, the forced poses, the narrow and crushed perspective of the back wall stand out. The highly studied intertwining of the hands that guide us to the center of the scene is extraordinary. Maria and Caterina, from whose faces an infinite purity and sweetness emerge, are dressed in sumptuous dresses, overflowing with folds and chromatic brilliance. Lotto's colours, bright and characterized by a range accentuated by strong luminous contrasts, were unknown to local painting - still permeated by Lombard taste - until the arrival of the Venetian artist.

The "Saint Nicholas of Bari presents the students of Galeazzo Rovellio to the Madonna enthroned with Child" is one of the two works from the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo of Brescia, painted by Alessandro Bonvicino known as Moretto for the church of Santa Maria dei Miracoli in Brescia, in 1539. Set in a classical architectural setting, the painting depicts Saint Nicholas of Bari presenting the pupils of the Brescian grammar master Galeazzo Rovellio, who commissioned the altarpiece, to the Madonna enthroned with the Child. Saint Nicholas anxiously turns to the Virgin to invoke her protection over the pupils. In her turn, the Madonna tries to bring attention to the latter of little Jesus, who however does not seem to want to take his gaze off her.
The four children carry Nicholas' bishop's miter and the symbols of the saint's miracles, including the three golden spheres, but they also hold their school books under their arms and in their hands. The devotional scene is thus enriched with a precise reference to the real context that promoted the creation of the work: that of a Brescia school of the time, with its young students depicted in elegant contemporary clothes. 
Everything is conveyed by Moretto with a pictorial language of great naturalness, which, while adopting Titian's precious colourism, proposes an original declination, characterized by an extraordinary ability to describe the various details of reality. This is demonstrated by the definition of the children's clothes, of which the painter restores the most detailed sartorial details, making us perceive the exact quality of their workmanship. 
Scholars have repeatedly assumed that the face of Saint Nicholas hid that of the master Galeazzo, who was sixty-seven years old at the time. It must be said, however, that the saint's physiognomy does not seem to reveal a portrait-like character. 
Why was the figure of Saint Nicholas chosen to occupy a central position in the Lombard master's altarpiece? The saint was considered the protector, among others, of children and students. 
 
Also from the Tosio Martinengo Pinacoteca comes "The Adoration of the Shepherds" by Giovan Girolamo Savoldo, created in 1540, a detail of which was chosen as the guiding image of the exhibition and of the catalog published by Skira. The painting was originally intended for the chapel of San Giuseppe in the church of San Barnaba in Brescia and was commissioned by Bartolomeo Bargnani, a member of the city's patriciate. 
It belongs to the painter's last phase, characterized by intense and sometimes dark tones and a use of mellow colour, capable of giving particular material effects that simulate velvet. The episode of the adoration of the Child is set in front of a dilapidated hut, inside which the ox and the donkey can be glimpsed in the dim light. 
Further behind, as happens in certain Flemish Nativities of the fifteenth century, two shepherds lean out of a small window, while on the left a third shepherd contemplates the scene leaning against a wall. Their description, with lively everyday accents, documents Savoldo's realistic propensity, also confirmed by the meticulous study of chiaroscuro effects. Significant in this regard is the detail of the robe of the older shepherd looking out the window, illuminated by the flashes coming from the apparition of the angel giving the announcement, in the sky at the bottom left. This is an effect of optical truth that will have an influence on Caravaggio 
Joseph and Mary also have simple, almost rustic characterizations, sealed by the passage of the carpenter's worn shoes in the foreground. Their figures without halos are arranged symmetrically in a meditative attitude on the sides of the luminous silhouette of the Child, who thus becomes the compositional fulcrum of the work, thanks also to the intense light reverberated by the white sheet on which he is lying.

From the Pinacoteca di Brera comes the "Madonna and Child with Saints Catherine of Alexandria, Francis and the Offerer" (circa 1555) by Giovan Battista Moroni. Painted for the church of Sant'Alessandro in Captura in Bergamo, it is among the first tests of an iconographic formula that would become characteristic of the artist. That is, that of the devout portrait praying in front of a sacred scene. In this case the character is portrayed in a very naturalistic way and occupies a position that makes us imagine him on his knees, beyond the boundary dictated by a balustrade. All his attention is directed to the figure of the Baby Jesus, intent on sealing the mystical marriage with Saint Catherine through the gift of a rose. The severe gaze of Saint Francis of Assisi - intent on displaying a cross - attracts the observer's attention. 
Here Moroni returns to reflect on a model of his master Moretto, updated in a mannerist key. The work was created shortly before 1555, a period that coincides with the definitive return to his homeland of the painter from Bergamo, divided in the previous years between the cities of Brescia and Trento.

EXHIBITIONS IN THE MUNICIPALITIES

The "Portrait of Giorgio Passo" (1569), by Giovanni Battista Moroni, is the first of three masterpieces from the Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco which will be exhibited in the 5 Milanese municipalities. The painting has curiously given rise to a series of misunderstandings, because in the transcription of the document, in the 1981th century, "Passo" was read as "Tasso" and the philosopher Ercole Tasso was mistakenly thought of. Only in XNUMX did the mystery find a solution thanks to the scholar Alberto Bellotti: the young nobleman who points his index finger to ask for attention is in fact Giorgio Passo Preposulo, a jurist who held important public offices in his city, Bergamo, to which he was very close . Like the author of the painting, Moroni, originally from Albino and trained in Moretto's workshop, who was very active in Bergamo and Brescia, painting both portraits and sacred works.

The second work, again coming from the Civic artistic collections of the Sforzesco Castle, is another canvas by Giovanni Battista Moroni, the "Portrait of Bartolomeo Colleoni", painted between 1566 and 1569. As in the medal settings, in profile it is half bust and the leader Bartolomeo Colleoni wears his armor with his head uncovered. Below him, in epigraphic characters, there is not only his name but also his origin: Bergamo. In addition to the portrait, there is an engraving, for which the painting perhaps served as a model, as well as a third version owned by the Bergamo lawyer Paolo Bisetti. This is a key work by Moroni for the attempt to naturalize and humanize the rigid fifteenth-century profile, typical of this genre of paintings. And he does it through a sensitive drafting, full of reflections, attentive to light and expressions, a mirror of the moral stature of the illustrious immortalized leader.

The third painting is the "Portrait of RA Torre". The character is a count, Count Torre Tassis at the age of 82. In the painting appears a heraldic insignia corresponding to the Toriani family, whose Bergamo branch was known as "Della Torre" or "Torre Cortesi". But the peculiarity of the painting lies in the "removal": there is no celebratory or rhetorical intent. Now bald and elderly, the count appears in a close-up and this makes the analysis of his face very fascinating: it is illuminated by a soft and slow light that strikes his forehead and allows us to meticulously investigate his physiognomic details. The author is unknown, but he belongs to the circle of Bergamo people operating in the late sixteenth century and the work was painted between 1550 and 1575.

The initiatives are promoted by the Municipality of Milan and the municipalities, coordinated by Palazzo Reale, and carried out together with the Pinacoteca del Castello Sforzesco with the organization of Civita.

Press folder (324.419.196 bytes) – Photo of the presentation conference