Self-Portrait

Michiel Sweerts looks straight out at us, a Flemish painter far from home. He made this self-portrait around 1650 in Rome, where he had settled among the northern artists who painted the city's street life, its beggars, workmen and children. The face is sober and watchful, with none of the swagger some painters gave themselves. What happened next is the strange part. Within a decade Sweerts grew intensely religious, attached himself to a French missionary group, and sailed east. He died in 1664 in Goa, on the coast of India. The picture entered the Uffizi's long-running collection of artists' self-portraits, where painters are asked to show themselves as they wish to be remembered.