Self-Portrait

In this sumptuous self-portrait by Flemish artist Michiel Sweerts, the soft backlighting and vivid physicality of the palette, together with the artist's frank expression, convey an almost otherworldly sense of distinguished self-esteem. Sweerts had spent nearly a decade in Rome, working in part for the nephew of Pope Innocent X, Prince Camillo Pamphili, but returned to his native Brussels by 1656, where he opened an artists' academy. The AMAM painting shows the artist dressed as a gentleman, proudly holding his brushes and palette in a landscape more reminiscent of central Italy, with its rolling hills, than of Flanders. The portrait was likely made around the time of his return to his former home, based on its coloristic relationship with other works by the artist, and comparison with two other known self-portraits. While artists had a long tradition of depicting themselves with the tools of their trade in their studios, it is unusual to find an ethereal landscape setting for such a work.

The pigments on the artist's palette- taken from his actual working palette and deposited with extraordinarily lifelike effect-were analyzed in 1954 and can be identified as those used widely by painters in the seventeenth century. They are (counterclockwise from upper right): vermilion, red lake (possibly madder), white lead, yellow ochre, red ochre (or Venetian red), terra verte, a warm brown lake (such as burnt sienna), a brown (like raw umber), a dark yellow (raw sienna), a dark brown (resembling sepia, or possibly Van Dyck brown or carbon black), and a lost pigment that was likely a blue.