This catalogue has been published to mark the exhibition in Venice at the Palazzo Franchetti, and presents the prestigious collection of self-portraits from the Uffizi in a show comprising some seventy works of art of exceptional artistic quality.
The reflected image of Narcissus searching for a hidden identity has always been, throughout the centuries, a ground for an artist's personal introspection: from Filippino Lippi to Raffaello; from Tintoretto to Guido Reni; to figures from the twentieth-century and contemporary art, the stimulating theme of the discovery of the self has characterised the personal journey of each artist to the point of the personality's betrayal.
This publication's fascinating trajectory reveals the dark side of disguised identity; through a kind of backwards journey in time the reader can get to know the face and personality of some of the leading figures on the international artistic scene: from the 15th to the 16th centuries including Filippino Lippi, Rafael, Primaticcio, Tintoretto, Guido Reni, Annibale Carracci; to the 19th century with Francesco Hayez, Giovanni Fattori, Giovanni Boldini, Giuseppe Pelizza da Volpedo; and finishing with the protagonists of the twentieth century and the contemporary world, such as: Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, Marc Chagall, Michelangelo Pistoletto and many others.
Post-Renaissance self portraiture placed emphasis on man, fearful of death and yet testament to the absolute gift of life; attention then shifted to the inner life, on the characteristics of human existence; even the stylistic manner of pictorial representation changed its point of observation: the half bust clearly differentiates itself from the complete figure, and the portrait, and in particular the self-portrait, probes the secret of immortality.
This important collection of self-portraits presents - in an exemplary way - five centuries of painting told through the depiction of the face, the very face of the people who made that history.
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