Los Angeles is currently hosting a Museum of Selfies that promises to share the “unseen depths and history of this cultural phenomenon,” but it may just be that Florence has them beat, with a 19th-century exhibit of ‘selfies’ by some of the world’s greatest artists.
Florence’s Uffizi Museum owns over 1,600 self-portraits, collected mostly by the Medici family. In 1866, curators created a gallery containing many of the best in the Vasari Corridor, the long hallway which connects the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace above the famed Ponte Vecchio. The selection has been updated over time, and now contains work from the 15th through 20th centuries, including self-portraits by Lippi, Raphael, Holbein, Bernini, Rembrandt and more.
And yes, some even contain other elements of modern selfies: painters who place themselves in costume, or at historic scenes or more. Caravaggio painted his face on the decapitated head of Goliath, Raphael stuck his own face into a crowd of ancient thinkers and artists, and Michelangelo, for reasons best not asked, painted himself as the flayed skin of Saint Bartholomew.
