Portrait of Pietro Secco Suardo

In 1563 a knight from Bergamo, in Lombardy, stood for one of the most ambitious portraits Giovanni Battista Moroni ever painted, full-length and life-size. Pietro Secco Suardo came from one of the wealthiest families of the city, yet Moroni set him in a plain, severe room that speaks more of lineage than of luxury. Look past the figure to the wall behind him. An ivy plant winds up a dry support, and beside it runs a Latin motto, te stante virebo, while you stand, I shall flourish. The ivy cannot live without the thing it climbs, and that is the whole point, a declaration of loyalty to the protector who keeps the sitter standing. From Titian, Moroni had learned to give a nobleman weight and presence, but he kept his own cooler, exact eye, alert to the real texture of cloth and skin. The painting reached the Medici collection in the early 18th century and has hung in the Uffizi since 1797.