Self-portrait

Antonio Canova was the most celebrated sculptor in Europe when he painted this, and that is the surprise of it. The man who made cool white marble here works in oil, on himself. He was about 35, living in Rome, at the height of the Neoclassical taste he had helped set. In marble he would later smooth and idealise his own features. In this canvas the face is more ordinary and direct, a working artist glancing up from what he is doing. The portrait came to the Uffizi as a gift from Giovanni degli Alessandri, a Florentine nobleman who ran the gallery. Canova carved his own likeness in plaster and stone in later years, but he set it down first in paint.