The Self-portrait with straw hat is dated 1975; many years have passed from Beltrami's elegant Self-portrait with his sister (1931). This painting seems to represent the artist's spiritual will, which can be read in another collection of self-portraits of those years, shortly before his death.
He paints himself on the river Po bank, near Santa Maria’s Church; he glances at the observer and – more generally – at the city. The gown, the palette and the paint brushes are the job instruments and the hanging brush turns the self-portrait itself into the artwork that the painter is painting.
The hat and the artist's smile are peculiar. They are interpretable elements in light of his precedents in the history of art. Beltrami had a nearly obsessive passion for every kind of headgear: after the skullcap in his young period, he used many others in the successive years, which could be unusual and also feminine. It is a capricious whim, often recurring in the portrayal that the artists give of themselves; on the other hand, smiling self-portraits are less diffused.
The titles that he gives to his last self-portraits are useful to interpret this grin: "faccia di povero Cristo" (poor Christ face), "tonto di mama" (mum’s dummy), "faccia da schiaffi" (slap face). Beltrami reveals, at the end of his career, a painful lucidity, which pushes him to be self-mocking, defamer towards himself and his public, disappointed and disapproving about his life, which tragically ended in 1987.
Donated by Marisa Coppini, 2000
