Ciro Ferri was a painter from Rome who was the student and assistant of Pietro da Cortona and became one of his closest followers. Ferri worked on a variety of prestigious commissions with Cortona, including the decorative cycles in the gallery of Alessandro VII in the Palazzo Quirinale. In Florence, he continued the decoration of the Pitti palace started by Cortone, finishing the Sala di Apollo and independently completing the Sala di Saturno. In Rome, he finished Cortona's frescoes in S Nicola di Tolentino and worked in a number of other churches and villas, including on the frescoes in the Villa Falconieri in Frascati. From 1665 to 1657, he was in Bergamo decorating the basilica of S Maria Maggiore, but his correspondence shows he kept close links with the Medici court and the Florentine aristocracy. In 1657, he was admitted to the Accademia di S Luca (the painters' guild) in Rome. Two years later he married Orsola Simonini and they had three children. After Cortone's death in 1669, Ferri returned to Rome where his projects included the mosaics in St Peter's in the Vatican. In 1673, the grand duke of Tuscany, Cosimo III, appointed him to establish an Accademia in Florence to train young Florentine artists. There are a number of Ferri's drawings in the Royal Collection.

This miniature is one of the collection of copies of 224 self-portraits by artists in the Uffizi Palace, Florence, that Lord Cowper, the art collector and patron, commissioned Giuseppe Macpherson (1726-1780) to paint. He presented the miniatures to King George III in two batches, in 1773 and 1786. Macpherson followed the original self-portraits quite closely, but copied only the head and shoulders. He inscribed the artists' names on the backs of the miniatures – several differ from those in the modern Uffizi catalogue, notably: Bazzi, Bellini, Campi, Annibale Carracci, Gabbiani, Masaccio, Metsys, Moroni, Pencz, Licinio, Schiavone and Spada. None of the miniatures is signed, apart from Macpherson's own self-portrait, which is inscribed: Giuseppe Macpherson / Autore della serie (Giuseppe Macpherson / Author of the series).

Macpherson was born in Florence, the son of Donald Macpherson, a footman in the service of Alexander, 2nd Duke of Gordon. He was a pupil of Pompeo Batoni and painted miniatures and enamel portraits in Italy, France and Germany, finally settling in Florence. A James Macpherson is recorded in London and Paris in 1754 but it is not certain that this is the same person. He was described in 1776 as having a special talent for painting on enamel and as being 'almost the only painter in Europe who possesses this art to perfection'. He had a distinguished client list which included some of the crowned heads and dignitaries of Europe. In 1778, he was invited to add his own self-portrait to the famous painters in the grand duke's collection as it 'would do honour to Florence to enrich the collection with a work which shows that we still have some men of true merit' according to Giuseppe Pelli, director of the Uffizi at the time.

Presented to George III by Lord Cowper