Self-portrait

The most famous history painting in Brazil was made in Florence. Between 1886 and 1888, the Brazilian painter Pedro Americo worked here on 'Independencia ou Morte,' the huge canvas of Emperor Pedro the First raising his sword above the Ipiranga brook, the image every Brazilian schoolchild knows as the country's cry of independence. Americo had trained in Paris but kept working in Florence for years. He painted this self-portrait in 1895, in his early fifties, by then the most celebrated academic painter of his country. His likeness came to rest in the Uffizi, in the very city where he had painted Brazil's founding scene.