Self-portrait in the Uffizi

Giulia Lama sent this self-portrait to Florence in 1725, and without it we might not know her face at all. She shows herself at about 44, palette and brush in hand, as a working painter rather than a decorative sitter. Lama ran a studio in Venice at a time when few women did, and she worked in dark, dramatic tones while much of the city was turning to bright Rococo pastels. She was also among the first women known to have drawn the male nude from life. Two centuries later this very picture let scholars recognise another Venetian portrait, now in Madrid, as a likeness of Lama by the painter Piazzetta, whom she had studied with.