El sastre

In the 1560s a portrait was almost always a record of rank. You paid to be shown as a nobleman, a bishop, a merchant of standing. Moroni, working in the Lombard town of Bergamo, instead painted a man at his trade. He looks up from a length of black cloth marked with white chalk, his shears open and about to cut, as if we had walked in and interrupted him. His cream doublet and red hose are those of a prosperous craftsman rather than a lord. Scholars now think he may have been a dealer in woollen cloth rather than a tailor by the hand. Either way he meets our eye directly and calmly, holding the moment just before the blades close.