The Studio of the Painter

The painting represents the painter’s studio in Rome in which he has depicted himself three times. On the bottom left in the foreground, he sits on a low stool and holds up a second self-portrait showing him as a young man. The figure shown from back at the easel is also the painter. Hung on the walls and supported on easels there are twenty-five paintings interspersed with small-scale plaster casts of significant artworks on pedestals and pieces of furniture.

A fourth self-portrait was discovered in 1968 on the reverse of the canvas.