Portrait of a Man holding a Letter ('L'Avvocato')

Nobody knows who this man was. L'Avvocato, the lawyer, is a nickname that stuck to the portrait long after Moroni painted it, around 1570. Two explanations are offered for the name. One is his look, part weary and part superior, as if he were summing up the evidence. The other is a misreading of the folded letter in his hand, addressed to a most worshipful Signor Giulio or Giuliano. What dates the picture is the trim of his beard and the cut of his clothes. Moroni kept almost everything to black, white and grey, and built the composition on a single diagonal that runs across the canvas down to the letter. The National Gallery bought the painting in 1865, soon after a Paris auction of the Pourtalès family collection.