Self-portrait

Barocci's self-portrait of c.1605 is one of the very few surviving likenesses of the artist, who was notoriously reclusive and a chronic invalid throughout his adult life, rarely leaving Urbino. The self-portrait provides visual documentation of a painter who was among the most admired in Italy by the late sixteenth century — El Greco was influenced by him, Rubens copied his works, and his colour inspired the next generation of Baroque painters. To paint oneself at approximately seventy years of age, still working despite lifelong illness, was an act of professional self-assertion as much as personal record.

Barocci's self-portrait likely shows him in working clothes or with the attributes of his profession, painted in the warm, atmospheric light that characterises all his work. The face, rendered with intimate observation, avoids the formal idealisation of official portraiture in favour of direct, slightly tired realism.