Self-portrait

In this painting, which amounts to a declaration of poetics, Gaetano Gandolfi offers an image of himself that is anything but idealised. The painter has portrayed himself at the age of about fifty in front of his easel, palette and brush in hand, in the act of painting a work that we cannot see. An incongruous array of objects adorn the scene, such as the hunting rifle slung up behind him, the game hanging from the easel, and the pipe tucked into the tricorn, while all the encomiastic and celebratory attributes of the Baroque tradition have disappeared.