Self-portrait

Mattia Preti's self-portrait of 1695 was painted when the artist was elderly, having spent over three decades working in Malta where he had decorated the co-cathedral of Saint John. It is a late document of a painter who had been one of the most powerful exponents of Caravaggesque painting in Italy and Malta, and who by this date had developed a distinctly personal mature style. The self-portrait records a face shaped by decades of prolific and physically demanding work.

Preti presents himself in three-quarter view, his aged features rendered with the honest directness characteristic of his portraiture. The warm, amber tonality of his mature palette — somewhat softened from the intense chiaroscuro of his earlier work — models the face with experienced authority. The eyes retain the penetrating quality that distinguishes his finest head studies.