A few self-portraits executed by Mengs in oils and pastels have survived. The Uffizi Gallery in Florence possesses a portrait dating from 1774 of which this painting, which probably entered the Hermitage in 1794, is a replica. Mengs, a Classical artist, strongly influenced by the ideas of the German scholar of the Ancient World Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), was the leading German painter in the second half of the 18th century and exceptionally popular across Europe. He managed to demonstrate that despite the influence of the French school German national painting had retained its hold on life. In the Self-Portrait Mengs invests himself with features of the ideal Renaissance man, using the best of his Classical techniques - precise, laconic line and painstaking plastic modelling of form.