Self-portrait

In 1924 the Uffizi asked Cecilia Beaux for her likeness. The gallery had been gathering artists' self-portraits since the 17th century, when Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici began the collection, and by then a place in it was among the highest honors a painter could receive. Beaux was one of the first American artists invited. She was near 70 and no longer in strong health, so she worked at it slowly, about an hour at a time, twice a week, for the better part of a year. The finished canvas left New York and reached Florence in April 1926. She shows herself the way she had painted high society for decades, upright and composed, without a prop or a fashionable setting to explain who she is.