Self-portrait

Andrea painted this small panel, barely larger than a sheet of paper, around 1528, when he was in his early forties and near the end of a career spent almost entirely in Florence. Within two years he was dead. In 1529 an imperial army laid siege to the city, and the plague that came with the fighting reached him in 1530. He was buried quietly in the church of Santissima Annunziata, where much of his best fresco work already hung. Here he looks out steadily, in plain dark clothes, without the props a painter might use to advertise his trade. The face is built up in the soft, smoky modelling he was known for, the edges of the features dissolving gently into shadow rather than drawn in hard line.