Self-portrait

Donato Creti's self-portrait of 1687 is a youthful work — Creti was born in 1671, making him sixteen at this date — remarkable for its apparent precocity if correctly dated. It documents the earliest phase of a career that would produce some of the most refined and elegant figure painting in early-eighteenth-century Bologna. Creti trained under Lorenzo Pasinelli, and this early self-portrait would show him absorbing the polished Bolognese classicism of his master before developing his own more personal, ideally cool refinement. The self-portrait of a teenage artist has particular documentary value for understanding his formation.

The young artist likely presents himself in a three-quarter pose, the face carefully observed with the precise modelling of his Pasinelli-trained technique. Even at this early date, Creti's characteristic cool tonality and precise draughtsmanship — the Bolognese classicist impulse — would be discernible in the face's careful rendering.