Self-portrait

Look closely and you're meeting the painter's own eyes. Simon Vouet made this while he was building a reputation in Rome, a French artist in his early thirties working his way to the top of the city's art world. It joined the Uffizi's remarkable gathering of self-portraits, a collection that has grown over the centuries to more than 1,600 faces of artists looking back at whoever stands in front of them. For a long time this one was hard to judge: an old overpaint, added sometime before 1750, sat over the original surface and dulled it. A recent cleaning lifted that layer and brought back what Vouet actually painted, a wide flat white collar, a loose lock of hair falling to one shoulder, and the warm brown tones and quick, confident brushwork of his Roman years.