Self-portrait

By 1670, when Luca Giordano painted himself, he already carried the nickname that would follow him for life: Luca fa presto, 'Luca, work faster.' The story goes that his father, also a painter, would call it out over his shoulder to keep the boy producing. Giordano became the great speed-worker of Naples, able to finish in hours what other painters took weeks over, and that fluency made him one of the most sought-after decorators in Europe. This self-portrait entered the Uffizi's famous gallery of artists shown by their own hand, a collection where painters hang beside the masters they admired. He looks out steadily, a working painter at the height of his reputation, about 36 years old, with decades of frescoed ceilings still ahead of him in Florence, and later at the Spanish court in Madrid.