Self-portrait

The Uffizi keeps a collection most galleries never thought to make: portraits of artists painted by themselves, gathered by the Medici since the 17th century. To be asked for your own likeness was a kind of recognition, and by 1766 few of those faces belonged to women. Anna Bacherini Piattoli earned her living in Florence the way many women painters could, in pastel and portrait miniature, the smaller and less prized formats, though she also painted religious pictures. For the Medici gallery she worked in oil, showing herself at about 46, direct and plainly dressed, holding the tools of her trade. She had trained in part under Violante Siries, another Florentine woman whose self-portrait hangs in the same collection.