Portrait of the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria

The 1552 Portrait of the sculptor Alessandro Vittoria in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum is one of the most conceptually interesting works in Moroni's portrait output: a painter portraying a sculptor, with all the inter-art rivalry and solidarity that implies. Alessandro Vittoria was a significant Venetian sculptor—a pupil of Jacopo Sansovino and one of the leading figures in late Renaissance Venetian decorative and portrait sculpture—and his inclusion as a Moroni sitter at the early date of 1552 suggests a moment of contact between the Bergamasco painter and the Venetian artistic world. Portrait paintings of artists were a Renaissance genre that both honoured the sitter and elevated the status of the visual arts. Vittoria's own medium—sculpture—may inform how Moroni renders him: the sculptural associations of modelled form and three-dimensionality were central to Moroni's own technique, making this a portrait of a kindred visual intelligence.

Oil on canvas with Moroni's warm observational technique. The painter of the portrait and the subject's own sculptural practice create an interesting dialogue: Moroni renders the sculptor's face with the same attentiveness to three-dimensional form that Vittoria applied in clay or stone. Vittoria may hold or be associated with sculptural attributes, making this a richer compositional field than a simple bust portrait.