Self-Portrait

Tintoretto's Self-Portrait at the Louvre captures the painter in old age — the bearded patriarch of Venetian painting, the speed and energy of his technique evident even in his own image. Self-portraiture in the late sixteenth century was an increasingly important genre as painters asserted their intellectual and social dignity against the traditional view of their craft as mere manual labor. Tintoretto's self-portraits engage with the tradition Titian had established of the painter as an elderly master — the accumulation of wisdom and skill embodied in a face of distinctive presence. The direct gaze and the relatively informal presentation contrast with the official dignity of the Venetian portraits he painted for the Republic's governing class.

The face emerges from deep shadows with powerful immediacy, Tintoretto's bold, summary brushwork creating an effect of psychological intensity unmatched in earlier Venetian self-portraiture.