Self-portrait

In 1719 the painter of this picture was 27 and near the start of his career in Florence, a city then living out the last years of Medici rule. Giovanni Domenico Ferretti would make his name with something unusual for a serious painter: lively scenes of Harlequin and the other masked characters of the commedia dell'arte, the comic street theatre. Here he turns that same eye on himself, plainly dressed and facing the viewer. The portrait belongs to the Uffizi's collection of artists' self-portraits, where painters were gathered side by side. Ferretti shows himself simply, the working painter at an age when his reputation still lay ahead of him.