Self-Portrait in Profile

Sometime in the 1660s, Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici set about gathering the portraits artists had made of themselves, and that collection, still one of the largest of its kind, is where this small painting ended up. Annibale Carracci made it around 1590, and the choice is a little unusual: he shows himself strictly in profile, the way a face appears on a coin or a medal, rather than turning to meet the viewer as most painters did in their own portraits. By 1686 it hung in the Uffizi beside another head then also thought to be Carracci looking at himself. That pairing hints at a running problem. The Uffizi holds several self-portraits linked to Annibale, and scholars have long argued over which are truly by him and which truly show him, so a face here labelled with his name is not always a settled fact. This one, painted while he was still working in Bologna, catches him before he left for Rome.