Self-Portrait

Largilli�re painted many portraits of himself. A number of these works were replicated, some more than once. In the present portrait, the fifty-year-old artist is seated in his studio. On the stone shelf behind him is a still-life composed of articles commonly found in an artist’s studio: a rectangular wooden palette, paint-stained brushes, and an array of plaster, terracotta, or marble sculptures, all but one of which are small in scale. The most prominent is the reduction of the full-length statue of a young male nude commonly called the Antinous (Vatican Museums, Vatican). Largilli�re had already used the Antinous as a prop in his portraits of Charles Le Brun and Nicolas Coustou.