Bernardo Spini

A member of one of the most important noble families of Albino, Bernardo Spini was involved in the local dyeing industry and wool market and held a number of public offices. This portrait and Pace Rivola Spini are the only known pendants of full-length portraits in Moroni’s oeuvre. The two subjects stand in similar interior settings, and though spaces like this may have existed in Palazzo Spini, the family home in Albino, the complementary nature of their settings — his engaged column at right, the pilaster in Pace Rivola Spini — suggests they were invented or embellished by the artist.