Brescia. The Renaissance in Northern Italy

An example of his classicist taste is Raphael's Angel. The painting was part of a larger altarpiece produced by the artist for the church of Sant'Agostino in Città di Castello.

The form of the face shows the influence of Perugino, the artist's master. Soon Raphael found his own style, with the ability to combine gentle facial expressions with careful attention to the spatial construction of scenes.

Paolo Tosio’s liking for classicism extended to the works of Alessandro Moretto, considered a purist and indeed the Brescian Raphael by contemporary Brescian art enthusiasts.

The protagonist of this panel by Moretto is an elegant lady, portrayed with a melancholy expression. Scholars have identified the woman as the poetess and courtesan Tullia d'Aragona, wearing a mask of Salome perhaps at a carnival.

Foppa’s work was fundamental for the mid-fourteenth century Brescian painters, considered by art historians to be the precursors of Caravaggio.

In Moretto’s Supper at Emmaus, Christ’s miraculous appearance is depicted as an almost domestic scene, with imposing figures in the foreground who emerge from a gloom that grades into complete darkness.

In the later Christ’s Passion and the Angel, the painter experiments with a colour palette that verges on the monochrome.

The dominant grey tones match the powerful facial expressions.

Another great protagonist of fourteenth-century Brescian painting was Girolamo Romanino.

Romanino’s investigation into light and colour is finely demonstrated by the silver reflections on the clothing of Christ Carrying the Cross.

The work by Andrea Solario was probably produced following a period spent by the Milanese painter in Venice. The scene takes place in a dark, sparsely depicted environment.

This small panel combines a severity of design that shows Bramantino’s influence with a high pictorial quality, evident in the chromatic portrayal of the figures.

In the section dedicated to portraiture Brescia painters are compared with artists active in Veneto and Lombardy.

Lorenzo Lotto’s portraiture contributed – together with references to Giorgione – to the style of Savoldo; his famous Flautist, standing out against a darkened room, seems absorbed in melancholic amorous meditations, immersed in psychological introspection.

A more aristocratic detachment distinguishes these gentlemen, depicted with meticulous attention to detail by Moretto.

The painting thrives on its combination of two basic trends: on one hand the setting’s Venetian style, evident in the position of the imposing figure, and on the other the typically Lombard use of light, brightly reflected from the surfaces and atmospheric in the background.

In this portrait of a magistrate we see, as in Moretto, the technique of a band of natural light from above that illuminates a grey wall in the background, giving rise to subtle tonal variations.

In this portrait Tintoretto concentrates on the face and its expression, even using thin lines of white lead to make the eyes look glassy.

The portrait by the Brescian painter Pietro Maria Bagnatore shows the three-quarter-length figure of a man slightly obliquely; his position is accentuated by the light shining on the breastplate of his armour.

In the late fourteenth century the artistic quest of painters from Brescia and Bergamo seems to have taken second place to the pre-eminence of the subjects’ social position and their representation in a dimension of timeless composure.