Self-portrait of Augusto Bastianini

Augusto Bastianini was 25 when he painted this in 1900, a young Tuscan studying his own face at the opening of a new century. It is a steady, closely observed picture, sober in its browns and blacks, with none of the flourish a beginner might reach for. He worked in the plain, grounded manner Florentine painting still favored, at a time when much of European art was drifting toward looser brushwork and brighter color. A self-portrait like this was also a kind of application, since Florence had long invited painters to leave their own likeness to the city, and his eventually joined that gallery of faces in the Uffizi. He looks out without a smile, a young man measuring himself at the start of the 20th century.