Te paper aims to investigate the ways of the artist’s self-representation in 18th-century Lombardy, before the advent of neoclassicism and the emergence of academic culture. In particular, it examines traditions and conventions adopted by... more
Te paper aims to investigate the ways of the artist’s self-representation in 18th-century Lombardy, before the advent of neoclassicism and the emergence of academic culture. In particular, it examines traditions and conventions adopted by the portrait of the artists in the 17th century and it highlights some lines of continuity or some variations. It examines with special regard the exemplary cases ofered by the self-portrait of the painter Carlo Innocenzo Carloni with his family and the self-portrait of Pietro Ligari, the latter compared with the portrait of Ligari’s daughter Vittoria, also a painter. Documentary and literary sources, most of all letters, allow to connect the examined cases to refections about the awareness of painter’s social and cultural role, his professional ambitions, as well as his inner anxieties.
