Johannes Gumpp

Almost everything we know about Johannes Gumpp comes down to a single painting he signed in 1646. He was born in Innsbruck, in the Austrian Alps, in 1626, into a family of painters and architects, and then he all but vanishes from the record. There are no later works, and barely a date of death.

What he left is one of the strangest self-portraits of the 17th century. It shows the painter from behind, seated at his easel. On the left, a mirror returns his face. On the right, the canvas he is working on returns it again — the back of his head, the reflection, and the painted likeness, three versions of one man that do not quite agree.

Painters had begun collecting one another's self-portraits, and the Medici in Florence were the great gatherers of them. Gumpp's round version now hangs in the Vasari Corridor above the Uffizi, among hundreds of painted faces. In the foreground a cat and a dog snarl at each other, right at the spot where the viewer stands.