“The human figure is the stage for the fight between psychological impulses and physical weightiness, the way in which this fight is carried out and constantly renewed determines the style representing the individual and the types”. This observation of the philosopher Georg Simmel (1858-1918), contained in an essay on the aesthetic meaning of the face (“The face and the portrait”, Il Mulino, 1985), could be the leading inspiration to travel through the 60 self-portraits displayed in the exhibition “The faces of Art: Self-portraits of the Uffizi Collection”, until the 5th of May, at the Franchetti Palace, joint seat of the Venetian Institute of Literature and Human Studies. A very intense anthology, curated by Giovanna Giusti and Maria Sframeli. The collection is part of a rare and non-displayed corpus, enshrined at the Uffizi of Florence. It’s extremely interesting the possibility given to the audience to follow the changing modality and forms of self-representation from the beginning of Renaissance to contemporary art. The exhibition display takes his move from the light shades of Filippino Lippi’s fresco (1845) and gently takes us to Italian leading art-movement of the Eighties “Transavanguardia”, with an oriental vision of him-self given by Mimmo Paladino (2003). The collection was outlined and initiated in 1664 by the enlightened Leopoldo de’Medici. The first order sent in that same year was Guercino’s self-portrait. Young Raphael self-portrait, dating back to 1506: the long neck, the bending downward face, the gloomy look expressing neutral indifference, strikes for the attenuation of the Ego. The figure is depicted on the left while the background is burnished. This figure would confirm the psychological portrait outlined by the polygraph Calcagnini:” a great and clever young man”. The face of a gloomy Tintoretto “senectute confectus” emerges from the dark with a painful and dim look. A flash of white lead in the middle of his chest, the prehensile hand just like holding a brush, only sign of energy left. One gloved hand and the other one resting on his side. In a noble aptitude and leading pose on a fire background, the contracted moustache of Velàzquez, portrayed in his forties. Rapid strokes outline, in a clot of roseate flesh and light, a face decomposed by time and with an affable look: It’s Rembrandt self-portrait in 1655. This work formed part of the collection of the Prince Ferdinando de’Medici in the Villa di Poggio in Caiano, and it’s now kept in the Uffizi with two other self-portraits. Giuseppe Maria Crespi opts for a very peculiar introduction: a scene of home intimacy that portrays him playing with his wife and children just like in the “conversation pieces” by Hogarth. Close perspective, half-close mouth while looking in the mirror. The sharp, piercing glance of a young and clever man used to deep introspection. Antonio Canova painted this portrait during a journey in Rome, on his way back from Possagno in 1972. Amos Cassioli informally opted for the standing position, with a “wide-angle” shot to portray himself in the last years of the Nineteenth century. Giovanni Fattori chooses rapid, pure strokes, of bust, a Nineteenth century flowing mustache, characterizing the style of a “Macchiaiolo”. The icon of Giovanni Boldini is a symbol of “Belle Époque” elegance, it was ordered by Ridolfi, Director of the Uffizi Gallery. Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo in the last years of the Twentieth century presents a “very meditated self image”: standing in a vertical position in his studio, the emaciated look of a Dostoevskij character, worn out books, a scull, a rose. The vigorous Swedish portraitist Anders Zorn (night portrait of Isabel Steward Gardner on the balcony of Palazzo Barbaro in Venice) presents the portrait of Dostoevskij himself sculpturing his wife Emma. The delicate Elisabeth Chaplin, pupil of Maurice Denis who died in Fiesole in 1982, (a wonderful ongoing monograph at the Musèe d’Orsay in Paris) depicted the sad, flowered self-portrait with umbrella. The uproarious “Autocaffè” of a mocking Giacomo Balla in which he carries a cup of coffee with acrobatic balance. His daughter, Elica, remembers that during breaks he would play guitar and while drawing, holding the cup of coffee, he would depict by heart: “he traced some general strokes holding the brush with his mouth”.