Self-portrait of Giovanni Antonio Lappoli

We know this face largely because of a neighbour. Giovanni Antonio Lappoli came from Arezzo, the same Tuscan town as Giorgio Vasari, and when Vasari wrote his famous lives of the painters he gave his fellow townsman a full chapter, more attention than Lappoli's surviving work alone would have earned him. He had moved through the best studios of his moment, assisting Pontormo in Florence and mixing in Rome with Rosso Fiorentino and Parmigianino, absorbing the restless, elegant style we now call Mannerism. His self-portrait joined the Uffizi's gallery of painters' faces, where he keeps company with far greater names. He presents himself calmly, a working artist rather than a celebrity, in the sober clothes of a respectable Tuscan professional.