Giambologna's fame as a portrait sculptor rests primarily on his imposing equestrian monuments and heroic busts. The series of miniature self-portraits that he executed at the time of his seventieth birthday are, therefore, all the more touching for the intimate position they occupy within his oeuvre. In 1599 Giambologna was elevated to the Papal Order of the Knights of Christ. The square-sided cross which is the device of this order was prominently added to the escutcheon surmounting the door of the sculptor's palace in Borgo Pini and to the bases of the bronze candlesticks in his funerary chapel in Santissima Annunziata. This same cross is found round the neck of a wax portrait miniature in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, which has commonly been identified as a self-portrait of Giambologna. The features of the wax are however, much deteriorated, so that its identification could only be firmly established by comparison with a related, though not identical, bronze cast- note the different placement of the cross and the treatment of the robe- and by comparison with documented portrait drawings of the sculptor, most notably a chalk study by Goltzius in Haarlem, dated 1591 (see Avery, op. cit., 1984). The identification of the work as a self-portrait, made by the authors of the Giambologna exhibition catalogue, has received wide support, including Montagu, Jestaz and Penny (op. cit.). The bronze cast is known in three versions (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Dijon; and the present work), all of which were shown together in London (cat. nos. 143-5) and judged to be of equally high quality.