Self-portrait

When Carlo Maratta painted himself around 1682, Rome had just lost the man who had shaped it for half a century. Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the sculptor and architect behind the great colonnade of Saint Peter's Square, had died in 1680, and no rival of that stature remained. Maratta was left, by general agreement, the leading painter in the city, the one popes and visiting princes came to. He presents himself soberly, a serious professional rather than a courtier, holding the viewer's gaze. His calm, classicizing manner, cooler and more orderly than the high drama of the Baroque around him, became the standard that Roman students were trained on well into the next century.