Self-portrait

By 1776 Johann Zoffany had spent several years in Florence, sent by Queen Charlotte of Britain to paint the Tribuna of the Uffizi, the octagonal room where the Medici kept their finest things. He was German by birth and had made his name in London painting actors and the royal family. When the Grand Duke of Tuscany asked him for a portrait to hang among the artists' own likenesses gathered here, Zoffany did not show the busy court favourite. He gives us a plainer man, caught in thought, in the old tradition that tied the true artist to melancholy and solitude. He would leave Florence before long, and later travel as far as India in search of new patrons.