The Frick Museum presents first major North American exhibition on Renaissance Painter, Giovanni Battista Moroni, through June 2.

In Renaissance Italy, one of the aims of portraiture was to make absent seem present through Naturalistic representation of the sitter. This idea—that art can capture an individual exactly as he or she appears—is shown in the work of Moroni. He spent his whole career in and around Bergamo, a region in Lombardy northeast of Milan and left a large group of portraits that far outnumber those of his contemporaries who worked in major artistic centers. Though he never achieved the fame of some of his contemporaries, he innovated the genre of portraiture in spectacular fashion.

The Frick brings together nearly two dozen of his best known portraits to explore his innovations and experiments that belie his masterful illusion of recording reality.

There are also objects—jewelry, textiles, armor—that best show the material and visual world Moroni recorded, embellished and transformed.

It’s well worth a visit.

Miriam Silverberg is the owner of Miriam Silverberg Associates, a boutique publicity agency in Manhattan. She may be reached at silverbergm@mindspring.com.