Self-portrait

When he painted this in 1616, Giovanni Mannozzi was about 24 and had just come to Florence from the little Valdarno town whose name he took as his own. He would spend the next 20 years as one of the Medici's favourite hands, though never an easy one. People who knew him described his temperament as bizarre and whimsical, and he worked outside the usual rules, laying fresh, light colour onto walls, and even onto terracotta tiles, when most painters kept to sombre Mannerist polish. None of that showy speed is on display in the young face here. He looks out plainly, a working painter near the start, a few years after he had frescoed a choir of musician angels into the dome of the Ognissanti church across the city.