Juan Batista Medina, also known as Sir John Baptiste de Medina (1659-1710), was born in Brussels, the son of a Spanish officer. He was apprenticed to François Duchatel but moved to London in 1686. Although Medina was primarily a portrait painter, among his earliest recorded works in London was a series of eight illustrations (London, Victoria &Albert Museum) for an illustrated edition of Milton's Paradise Lost, published in 1688. By the early 1690s, Medina was running a productive portrait workshop in Drury Lane. Among his customers were members of the Scottish nobility, including George Melville, first earl of Melville, whose cousin Margaret, countess of Rothes, helped persuade Medina to move to Edinburgh. He finally settled there, along with his wife, Jeanne Marie Vandale, and their children. Between about 1697 and 1708 he completed a major project – a series of 29 portraits of members of the Royal College of Surgeons. Shortly afterwards he received the honour of a knighthood, the last to be granted in an independent Scotland. He is buried in Greyfriars churchyard in Edinburgh.

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.