Self-portrait

Lega's 1861 self-portrait, held in the Uffizi Gallery's extensive collection of artist self-portraits, was painted at a crucial moment in his development: the Macchiaioli movement was cohering as a coherent group, and Lega himself was approaching the mature style that would produce his greatest works within the decade. Self-portraiture has a particular tradition at the Uffizi, where the Medici began collecting artists' representations of themselves in the seventeenth century; to have one's self-portrait accepted there was a mark of standing. Painted on panel — a support favoured for its smooth ground and tonal responsiveness — the work shows Lega at thirty-one, confident and appraising. The artist confronts his own image with the same directness he brought to his genre subjects: no flattery, no heroic attribute, simply an honest account of a face in a particular quality of light. It stands as both a professional document and an example of his evolving painterly method.

The panel support provides a fine-grained base for Lega's modelling of his own features. Light falls from the upper left, creating clear value gradations across forehead, nose, and cheekbone. The background is a neutral dark, a convention Lega uses here to focus attention on the face without pictorial distraction. Brushwork is more careful than in his genre scenes, reflecting the reflective nature of self-scrutiny.