Mattia Preti was an Italian painter from Calabria, in the south of Italy. His nickname was il cavaliere Calabrese (the knight of Calabria). He had probably moved to Rome by 1630 to join his brother Gregorio, who was also a painter, and was a member of the Accademia di S. Luca from 1632. His early work included genre scenes of card players and musicians, while later he concentrated on religious subjects. In 1641, he was made a knight of Malta and in the following decade he travelled widely for his work in Italy and is also said to have gone to Flanders and Spain. He moved to Naples around 1653 where he was very successful, undertaking a number of important commissions there, including a series of seven frescoes on the city gates recording the plague there of 1656. In 1661, Preti settled in Malta, and several churches on the island have decorations by him, including the cathedral of Valetta. For his work here he was awarded the rank of knight of justice by the Knights of Malta in 1662.

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.