Self-portrait

One of the artist's latest works and the last self-portrait, to which Columbano intended to add his wife, on the right, in the lighter space of the canvas, shows him – how had already happened with Antero de Quental - with a diluted presence, almost ghostly, where only the idea of an image persists. The chiaroscuro is thus diluted in nuances to which the unfinished accentuates the presence of the clear stroke, canceling the limits of the surfaces to consequently dematerialize the figure in a regime of intensities. As with the "Self-portrait" of 1904, the eye / bezel motif defines an ellipse that functions as the visual center of painting. The dark eye, in its entirety, subtly suggests the presence of the eyeglass. Around this central motif is also elliptically developed the shadow of the brim of the hat. The illuminated face, better finished, reveals a haughty pose in which coexists the irony of an almost provocative satisfaction of a destiny conquered beyond its time.