Self-portrait of Philip Alexius László de Lombos

By 1911 Philip de Laszlo had painted much of Europe's ruling class - emperors, a pope, kings and their families had sat for him across a dozen capitals. That year the Uffizi asked him for the one sitter he usually left out, himself. The gallery had been gathering artists' self-portraits since the 1600s, and an invitation to join them was a recognition no royal commission could match. He was 42, at the height of a career built on fluent, flattering likenesses, and here he turned that same fluency on his own face. The painter who spent his days studying other people looks back with the composure he gave his sitters. The canvas now hangs among the hundreds of artists who answered that same call across three centuries.