Self-portrait

By the time Preti painted this, he was an old man on Malta, near the end of a long life and for decades a knight of the Order of St John, the honour that earned him the nickname Il Cavalier Calabrese, the Calabrian knight. He had left southern Italy long before, and he would die in Valletta in 1699. A self-portrait like this had a particular destination. Since the 1660s the Medici in Florence had been gathering the likenesses of painters shown in their own hand, each face by the artist himself, and Preti's joined that growing collection. So here is a painter presenting himself to a room full of other painters: a steady, unhurried look, plain dark dress, none of the theatre he gave his altarpieces. It hangs today among the hundreds of self-portraits the Uffizi still keeps.