MORETTO, ALESSANDRO BONVICINO detto il. - Painter, b. in Brescia in 1498, d. there on 22 Dec. 1554.
Between 1515 and 1518 he painted, together with Ferramola, the organ shutters for the Duomo Vecchio of Brescia, now at Lovere; but in the part due to him (the two holy knights on the inside of the shutters) he shows that he had by far surpassed the backward manner of that mediocre Brescian painter, and that he was instead drawing close to the older compatriot Romanino, with whom he collaborated shortly afterward (1521-23) on the paintings of the chapel of the Most Holy Sacrament in S. Giovanni Evangelista. The influence of Romanino, that of Savoldo, who suggested to him more vigorous contrasts of shadow and light (evident, for example, in the altarpiece with the Assumption of the Duomo Vecchio, of 1526, and in the altarpiece with the Virgin and saints of the Fabbricetta at Manerbio), and that of Lotto, from which derive the romantic intentions of certain portraits (Portrait of a Gentleman in the National Gallery in London, of 1526), never deeply affect the art of M., who clarifies these experiences within his placid provincial nature. The artist's maturity produces certain masterpieces: the altarpiece with St. Margaret and two saints in S. Francesco in Brescia (1530), the famous Madonna of the sanctuary of Paitone (1533), the St. Justina of the Pinacoteca of Vienna, the altarpiece with St. Nicholas presenting three children to the Virgin, in the Pinacoteca of Brescia (1539), of more directly Titianesque inspiration, and the organ shutters of the church of the S. Corpo di Cristo in the same city, so singularly anticipating the developments of 17th-century painting. Evident in this work are the formal elements taken from Raphael and from Giulio Romano, which in certain works, such as the Fall of Manna and the Slaughter of the Innocents in S. Giovanni Evangelista, drive him to neoclassical coldness; but in others, such as the Nativity of the Pinacoteca of Brescia, M. is wisely balanced and reabsorbed into Lombard manners, and gives the scene a tight compositional unity. The composition is even more compact and concentrated and coherent in the Supper in the House of the Pharisee in S. Maria in Calchera. Still echoes of Venice and of Roman Mannerism in his later maturity (the last dated work is the Deposition of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, of 1554), but without bringing changes of direction to the art of M., who always remains consistent with his closed provincial taste.
Bibliography
Emma Zocca