Self-portrait

By 1783, when this self-portrait was painted, the Uffizi had been collecting artists' self-portraits for over a century, and being asked into that gallery was a mark of standing. Chiara Spinelli belongs to it as both a painter and a noblewoman. Born in 1744, she worked mainly in pastel, the soft chalk medium then fashionable for portraits, and she later became Princess of Belmonte. Her likeness went into the Uffizi beside those of two other women who worked in Florence, Irene Parenti Duclos and Anna Borghigiani, a small cluster of female hands in a collection long dominated by men. She shows herself plainly, as a working portraitist rather than a titled lady. The collection she joined now runs to well over 1,000 faces, and hers is among the comparatively few painted by a woman.