Self-portrait of Pieter van Laer (1599-1642?)

Pieter van Laer was a Dutch painter who made his name not in Holland but in Rome, where he lived through the 1620s and 30s. His body was misshapen, and the Italians nicknamed him il Bamboccio, roughly the clumsy puppet. He turned the mockery into a trade. Instead of grand mythologies he painted the ordinary life of the Roman streets, beggars, carters and taverns, small scenes his followers named bambocciate after him. This self-portrait shows the man behind that new kind of picture, dark-eyed and watchful, with a heavy moustache. He looks straight out, giving the viewer none of the street comedy he sold to his patrons.