Federico Maria Sardelli. L'Autoritratto degli Uffizi

On November 13, 2023, the Uffizi Galleries acquired, in a public ceremony, a self-portrait by Federico Maria Sardelli, which would join the great collection of self-portraits that began in the mid-seventeenth century and was never interrupted. 

The idea of acquiring that painting had come about the previous year through the initiative of then-director Eike Schmidt.

This volume aims to tell this little story and to investigate the work more closely through testimonies, documents and critical contributions.

Autoritratto 38 is an oil and tempera painting on canvas of his self-portrait, measuring 80 x 80 cm, executed in 2001, when the artist was 38 years old.

In the volume, it is illustrated in ample detail and compared with an extensive gallery of the author's self-portraits.

“Throughout my life I have painted many self-portraits. I paint one whenever I feel there is a passage in my life, thus, to mark the path (...) to mark a small point in our favor in the daily struggle against time.”