An odd bunch

Artists’ Self-Portraits from the Uffizi

The Uffizi is to Florence what the National Gallery is to London, and part of its astonishing collection is devoted to a unique array of self-portraits, housed now in the Corridoio Vasariano. This long corridor, which links the Palazzo Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti, was designed by Giorgio Vasari, artist, architect and grandfather of art history with his classic Lives of the Artists. The self-portrait collection was begun in the 17th century by Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici, and has been added to ever since, but its documentation has never been precise. Thus there are two self-portraits by Guercino in the collection, both disputed by scholars, but neither seems to be the one originally commissioned by the Cardinal. Here already is part of the legend surrounding the collection — its strange variability and in some cases its questionable authenticity. Added to this, the Vasari Corridor is not particularly accessible to the general public, so it is more familiar from report than first-hand experience.

At Dulwich are some 50 works of art from the collection, mostly paintings but a couple of sculptures as well, selected by the Italian art historians Giovanna Giusti and Maria Sframeli for an exhibition which previously showed in Venice. Was the selection made with an Italian audience in mind? I’d like to see what an English curator would have chosen for an English public. The collection contains self-portraits by Holbein, Sargent, Rauschenberg, Puvis de Chavannes, Rubens, Millais, Bocklin, Andrea del Sarto, Ingres, Delacroix and Corot — to pick but a few names at random. None of these appears here. What we have instead is a strange mixture of the familiar and the unknown, by no means all deserving the designation ‘masterpiece’, proffered so unblushingly in the exhibition’s title.