Benedetto Luti was a Florentine painter who trained under Anton Domenico Gabbiani before moving to Rome in 1690. He was elected to the Accademia di S. Luca in 1694 and quickly rose to prominence as one of the leading painters of the early eighteenth century. His earliest known work is God Cursing Cain (1692, Derbyshire, Kedleston Hall). In Rome, he worked for many of the leading Roman families and decorated a ceiling with an Allegory of Diana in the Palazzo de Carolis. He also painted portraits, in both oil and pastel, which were widely collected. Aside from his practical artistic activity, Luti was also renowned as a collector and teacher and acted as an art dealer and agent. After he died, his collection of Old Master drawings, reputed to contain around 15,000 sheets, was bought by the dealer William Kent (not to be confused with the artist and architect William Kent, who had studied under Luti in Rome some 40 years earlier and died in 1748). The drawings were brought to London by Kent and sold at two auctions in December 1760 and December 1762.

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.