MORETTO, IL (1494-1554), Italian painter of the Brescian school. His real name was Alessandro Bonvicino. He was probably born at Brescia, and was a pupil of Fiorante Ferramola, a Bres cian follower of Foppa. It has been said that Moretto's works display the influence of Titian, of Raphael, and of other contem porary masters. He was, however, a strong individuality with a distinctive style of his own. His conception of form was strong and elegant ; his sense for colour harmonious and decorative. His compositions are bathed in a cool, silvery tone, his figures are modelled by a fine play of light and shade. As a portraitist he went beyond the rendering of external form, penetrating into the character and disposition of his sitters. He worked chiefly in Brescia, where his paintings can best be studied. In 1529 he was in Bergamo; in 1540-41 in Milan and Verona. He died at Brescia on Dec. 29, His earliest picture, dated 1518, is the "Christ bearing the Cross," at the Town gallery of Bergamo ; the frescoes in the Corpus Domini chapel of San Giovanni Evangelista at Brescia are dated 1521. In the decoration of this chapel he collaborated with Romanino, another leading painter of Brescia. Among his first paintings are the ceiling fresco representing the "Vision of Moses," and other paintings in the Galleria Martenengo at Bres cia. The churches of Brescia possess many altar pieces by him,
among which the "Coronation of the Virgin," in San Nazzaro e Celso, is perhaps the most notable. In the church of Paitone, near Brescia, is "The Virgin appearing to a Shepherd Boy." There is a large, well-composed picture representing "Christ in the house of Levi" in the nuns' gallery of Santa Maria della Pieta in Venice, dated 1544. The Vienna gallery has a "St. Justina," perhaps his finest work. The National Gallery, London, has three fine por traits and several other works, the Johnson collection in Phila delphia a "Madonna and Donors"; the Metropolitan Museum of Art at New York a "Christ in the Desert," a charming early work, and an "Entombment," dated 1554, which is his latest known work. His foremost pupil was the famous portrait painter Giambattista Moroni.
See Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in North Italy (2nd ed. 1912) ; G. Morelli, Italian Masters in German Galleries (1883) ; S.
Fenaroli, Alessandro Bonvicino (1875). (I. A. R.)