Self-portrait or a portrait of François Rivière

For most of two centuries this face went by the wrong name. It was catalogued as the painter's own self-portrait, and only later reading pointed elsewhere: to Francois Riviere, a French painter who worked down in the port of Livorno, turning out small comic genre scenes and never quite making a living from them. That may be the man here, with his wry, half-melancholy smile. Houbraken framed him with a trick. The head leans out of the shadow through a tear in a canvas, and the sitter's own hand seems to hold the rip open. On the canvas that has split is a painted garland of flowers, the very thing Houbraken was known for. A Florentine exhibition of 1729 listed the picture plainly as a flower painting with the portrait of Mr. Riviera set inside it.