Schalcken conducted a highly successful portraiture practice during his four-year stay in London. His clientele were drawn from the upper echelons of society, including wealthy merchants, barristers, and influential members of the court. At the same time, he made at least three self-portraits. This chapter explores each of these works with reference to the circumstances of their production, their function, and Schalcken's possible motivations in creating them.

As was explained in the Introduction, by the time Schalcken departed for England in the late spring of 1692 he already enjoyed a reputation of truly international proportions. His pictures were purchased by French and German collectors, among others, and in the Dutch Republic he was frequently patronized by high-ranking government officials in The Hague. The international allure of Schalcken's art did not diminish when he moved to London. To the contrary, in some respects it actually expanded thanks to Schalcken himself, who had much to do with the promotion of his art abroad, even if this is not sufficiently appreciated today. A case in point is his marvelous Self-Portrait (Fig. 36) painted for Cosimo III de’ Medici (1642–1723), Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Widely traveled, Cosimo III was a sophisticated aesthete, who, in pursuing a collecting strategy begun by his uncle, Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici (1614–1675), amassed an outstanding collection of self-portraits by Europe's most distinguished painters. The work of Dutch artists figured prominently in this august assemblage, paying testimony to the catholicity of the Gran Principe's taste as well as to his special interest in the art of the Low Countries, a region he had toured twice, in 1667–68 and again, in 1669. Following his return to Florence and the death of Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici in 1675, Cosimo III went about commissioning a series of self-portraits from eminent painters, with the intention of displaying his acquisitions and similar works he had inherited from his uncle in a Grand Gallery space in the Uffizi. The gifted Leiden painter, Frans van Mieris (1635–1681), for example, contributed two self-portraits to this initiative. In his monograph on the painter, Otto Naumann uncovered some fascinating documents concerning the Grand Duke's acquisition of these two pictures.