Portrait of Gian Gerolamo Albani - Giovanni Battista Moroni

Moroni's late portrait of an elderly Bergamo nobleman in a black gown lined with lynx fur, traditionally identified as Gian Gerolamo Albani.

Giovanni Battista Moroni (about 1520–1579) worked in and around Bergamo, in Lombardy, and painted the city's leading families from life. This late portrait shows an old man seated in a chair, turned slightly to his left, looking straight out at the viewer.

The sitter has traditionally been identified as Gian Gerolamo Albani (1509–1591), a Bergamo jurist and politician from one of the city's most powerful families. He was made a cardinal in 1570 and died in Rome. The Frick Collection's 2019 Moroni exhibition catalogued him more cautiously, as possibly Gabriele Albani, and dated the canvas to about 1572–73. The painting is in a private collection.

He wears a black gown lined and edged with lynx fur, white with dark spots, which falls in two broad bands from his shoulders to the bottom of the canvas. A plain white collar shows at his neck above a long white beard. A gold chain with a pendant cross hangs on his chest. His right hand holds a small book against the arm of the chair, and a ring shows on his left hand.

Moroni sets the figure against a plain grey-brown wall, so the eye goes to the face and the fur. The contrast between the black cloth and the pale fur gives the picture its structure, and the warm flesh of the face and hands carries the only strong colour. The fur is painted in short, separate strokes, while the face is modelled in small, even changes of tone.

Moroni's sitters are usually shown as they were, without flattery, and this one is no exception: the lined forehead, the heavy eyelids and the slight frown are recorded as plainly as the fur and the chain. The painting is in oil on canvas.