Portrait of a Man and a Boy (Count Alborghetti & Son)

In June 1895 Christie's in London auctioned the pictures of the late collector Henry Doetsch, and lot 63 was described as portraits of Count Alborghetti of Bergamo and his son. The Alborghetti family had sold it to him, and their name stuck. Before the year was out the London dealers Colnaghi had passed the canvas, through Bernard Berenson, the young American expert on Italian painting, to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, for 3,079 dollars.

The museum now doubts that name. Moroni painted the picture at the start of his career, around 1545 to 1550, and the bearded man at the table may have been a professional of the middle class, a lawyer or a secretary, and the boy beside him his servant. The evidence is a sealed letter lying on the tablecloth, addressed to the most magnificent Signor Baldesar. If the man was a secretary, he may have written that letter himself.

Around 1800 the painting had belonged to Teodoro Lechi, a collector in Brescia, before it reached the Alborghetti.