MINARDI, Tommaso

A painter, illustrator, and author, Tommaso Minardi began his career as a pupil of Giuseppe Zauli. His initial activity in Rome consisted in ten years of employment with the engraver Giuseppe Longhi, for whom he did reproduction drawings of Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; in addition, he studied the works of Leonardo and Raphael. In 1819, on behest of the neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, Minardi was named director of the Academy in Perugia. From 1821 to 1858, he was employed as an instructor at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome.

In his mature period, Minardi adopted the style propagated by the German Nazarenes.

In his Self-Portrait, the artist depicts himself sitting on a mattress, wrapped in his coat, in a humble but tidy room. The oblique wooden ceiling of the mansard room forms the strongest diagonal accent in a composition that is otherwise determined by a quiet contrast of horizontals and verticals. On the back wall of the room, there is a full bookcase, and books are piled on the desk at the left. A number of other everyday things are distributed picturesquely around the room. Light falls into the interior from two windows on opposite walls whose shutters open into the room. A death’s head and an animal skull serve to underscore the melancholy mood of the as yet unrecognised, starving genius.