Portrait of the Painter

Dou painted himself in Leiden in 1658, and the more interesting story is how the panel ended up in Florence. By the 1670s the Medici court wanted works by Dou badly, and Cosimo III, who had travelled through the Dutch Republic and seen the fine painters at home, sent instructions to his agent in Amsterdam to buy them. Dou's pictures were among the most expensive an agent could be asked to chase, and a steep sum changed hands to bring a self-portrait south. It joined the grand-ducal collection of artists' self-portraits, the gallery of painters looking back at you that the Uffizi still keeps. So this face belongs to a man at his worktable in a Dutch town, acquired by a Florentine prince who collected the makers of his pictures as eagerly as the pictures themselves. He shows himself calm and well dressed, a successful master.