Self-portrait

Mengs's 1773 self-portrait, now in the Vasari Corridor in Florence, places him in one of the most prestigious sequences of artist self-portraits in European art — the Uffizi collection that traces a lineage from Renaissance masters through the eighteenth century. Self-portraits submitted to the Uffizi were a mark of recognised standing; Mengs's inclusion confirms his European reputation in the final decade of his life, when he had served two major courts (Habsburg Spain and Rome) and had been widely regarded as the leading theorist-painter of Neoclassicism. The work must also be read as a self-conscious statement: Mengs was deeply aware of artistic tradition and of his own place within it, and a self-portrait submitted to the greatest gallery of artist likenesses in Europe was both a personal document and a claim on posterity.

Self-portraiture allowed Mengs to apply his full technical precision to a subject he could study at length and without the social pressures of a paying commission. The face would have received the maximum degree of careful modelling possible within his smooth sfumato technique, combining careful observation with the formal idealism he associated with Raphael.